Slate Articleshttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut.fulltext.all.rss
Stories from SlateThe Boston Celtics Are Athlete’s Foothttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/can_the_boston_celtics_annoy_their_way_to_an_nba_title.html
<p>As his Golden State Warriors built a first-half lead over the Boston Celtics, Steve Kerr told TNT sideline reporter Rosalyn Gold-Onwude that the Celtics were “the best team in the league.” It seemed like dubious praise at the time, the words of a coach of an unbeatable team puffing up the opposition. By the time the Celtics had overcome a 17-point deficit to beat Golden State 92-88—Boston’s 14th win in a row, giving them a league-leading record of 14-2—that praise was starting to sound a lot more genuine.</p>
<p>Kerr had been lavishing the Celtics with compliments even before&nbsp;Thursday’s&nbsp;game. “It sure looks like Boston is the team of the future in the East,” he <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/21416238/steve-kerr-calls-boston-celtics-team-future-east">told ESPN’s Chris Haynes</a> on Wednesday. “That looks like a team that is going to be at the top of the East for a long time to come.” But despite what Kerr says, the Celtics are not an exciting and spritely “team of the future.” They are a squad of Benjamin Buttons: fun young players who are all secretly seasoned vets.</p>
<p>Take rookie Jayson Tatum. He may be 19, but the No. 3 pick in the 2017 draft already performs with the maturity and intelligence of a ring-chasing 34-year-old role player. He even looks the part, and his dated mustache-goatee combo screams “paying the bills at the dining room table after the kids go to bed.” (The Boston media are of course handling him with the <a href="http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/11/16/would-you-rather-jayson-tatum-anthony-davis-celtics/">measured restraint</a> for which they are known.)</p>
<p>Seven of the 10 players who took the floor for Boston on Thursday night—starters Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Kyrie Irving, plus reserves Marcus Smart, Semi Ojeleye, Terry Rozier, and Daniel Theis—are 25 years old or younger. They should be too callow to be winning like this. Yet here we are, mourning lost youth.</p>
<p>In Thursday’s win, the Celtics held Steph Curry to 9 points on 3-14 shooting, which is essentially like throwing handcuffs on a forest fire. And while Kevin Durant scored 24, he had to work through a squadron of Boston defenders to get every look, including on his baseline attempt in the closing seconds that would have sent the game to overtime. On the perimeter, the Celtics combine toughness (Smart is <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/11/10/jalen_ramsey_s_guide_to_trolling.html">a pest, in a good way</a>) with length and athleticism (second-year forward Brown, who <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/11/17/jaylen_brown_leads_celtics_to_win_over_warriors_after_death_of_best_friend.html">had a terrific night under adverse circumstances</a>) to funnel teams where they want them. It’s why the Warriors, who average 117.5 points per game, managed to score only 88 in 48 minutes.</p>
<p>Boston’s <a href="https://twitter.com/TBNMedia/status/931344390873903111">wrist-slapping</a>, jersey-grabbing victory looked like of all the Celtics’ other wins. In a league in which only four teams allow less than 100 points per game, the Celtics—<a href="https://espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/teamstats/_/sort/defensiveEff">who lead the league in defensive efficiency</a>—give up just 94.1. (The Cleveland Cavaliers, whose roster consists of LeBron James and the cast of <em>The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel</em>, give up 112.1.) Boston also grabs a staggering 82 percent of its opponents’ missed shots. Annoying and persistent, the Celtics are like athlete’s foot. Long story short, they make you miss and then get the rebound. They are fungi.</p>
<p>Playing the Celtics is like traveling through a wormhole to an earlier era. The NBA in 2017 is all about <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/what_the_orlando_magic_tell_us_about_the_nba_s_crazy_start.html">playing fast and small</a>. Boston, meanwhile, is ranked 22nd in pace and runs much of its offense through center Al Horford. It’s all rather unfashionable, but the Celtics make it work. They showed up to the first day of school after raiding their dad’s closet and now everyone’s raving about their elastic-waisted cargo pants.</p>
<p>The fact that Boston has managed to put together this win streak after losing star small forward Gordon Hayward to a <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/gordon_hayward_and_how_we_watch_gruesome_injuries.html">gruesome injury</a> in the first game of the season is nothing short of confounding. The way that they’re doing it may be even more surprising.</p>
<p>For the past three years or so, Stevens had the Celtics performing above their pay grade thanks to a ball-sharing offense and sturdy team defense. When they traded for Irving over the summer, the worry was that the electric point guard’s defensive shortcomings would become a liability in Stevens’ system. Sixteen games into the 2017 season, those fears look like silly bedwetting. Statistically, the Celtics are <a href="https://hardwoodhoudini.com/2017/10/29/kyrie-irvings-defense-more-important-than-offense-right-now/"><em>better</em> defensively</a> with Irving on the court than with him off it. Either Irving has <em>Freaky&nbsp;Friday</em>’d with mid-1990s Gary Payton, or people <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/kyrie_irving_s_trade_request_could_destroy_the_cavs_and_his_own_career_worth.html">like myself</a> who made wild predictions in August were wrong. I tip my cap to the benevolent witch responsible for the body-switch—clearly she wanted to teach Irving and Payton a lesson, and it looks like it’s working. Also, Brad Stevens seems like a very good coach.</p>
<p>If the Celtics really are the cream of the Eastern Conference, they will serve as a wildly different foil to the Warriors than the Cavaliers have the last three seasons. To say that Cleveland revolves around LeBron James is a cosmic understatement. If I may paraphrase Carl Sagan, James is the star stuff of which the Cavs are made. The Celtics lack this kind of charismatic <em>paterfamilias</em>. They are death by a million paper cuts, and the Warriors learned this annoying lesson firsthand&nbsp;on Thursday.</p>
<p>It’s only November, but the Celtics have at least proven that they will be a tougher out for the Cavs in the Eastern Conference playoffs this year than they have been in the past. There’s no point in predicting what will happen come April, May, and June, but we know how the Celtics will play once the postseason arrives. Should they go the distance in the East, their blueprint on how to combat Golden State will be more about negating heroics than relying on them.</p>
<p>The narrative surrounding the previous three NBA Finals has been Hannibal versus Rome, with LeBron leading his Cavs on a series of fateful marches to face the mightiest of opponents. The Celtics don’t have a Hannibal. They aren’t the hordes at the gates. They are administrative rot. Would you rather watch a mighty hero try to take down Rome, or would you rather see a great empire succumb to, say, contaminated aqueducts? I’m already getting excited for June—the promotional copy just writes itself.</p>Fri, 17 Nov 2017 22:30:11 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/can_the_boston_celtics_annoy_their_way_to_an_nba_title.htmlNick Greene2017-11-17T22:30:11ZCan they annoy their way to an NBA title?SportsCan the Boston Celtics Annoy Their Way to an NBA Title?100171117017nbabasketballNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/can_the_boston_celtics_annoy_their_way_to_an_nba_title.htmlfalsefalsefalseCan the Boston Celtics annoy their way to an NBA title?They are a squad of Benjamin Buttons: fun young players who are all secretly seasoned vets.Getty ImagesKyrie Irving of the Boston Celtics celebrates during the fourth quarter against the Golden State Warriors on Nov. 16, 2017.Joyless Divisionhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/divisions_are_ruining_college_football_and_there_s_nothing_we_can_do_about.html
<p>Wisconsin’s game against Michigan on Saturday is the biggest college football match-up of the week and of the Badgers’ season to date. It’s the fifth-ranked, 10-0, national title contender’s chance to demonstrate its bona fides to the country and the College Football Playoff committee by defeating a blue-blood program, a Jim Harbaugh-led Michigan squad that … [checks clipboard] … actually, hang on a minute. It turns out that Michigan has not itself beaten a team with a winning record and <a href="http://www.espn.com/college-football/game?gameId=400935386">got blown out by approximately 400 points</a> in its only game against an elite competitor this year.</p>
<p>Michigan, the most formidable of the 12 regular-season opponents faced by an ostensible title contender, is an above-average Big Ten team, but seemingly not much more than that; it will probably end up in a second-tier bowl game sponsored by an appetizer-oriented restaurant chain. But if the Badgers beat the Wolverines and defeat mediocre Minnesota the following weekend, they will enter the Big Ten title game, <a href="https://www.landof10.com/big-ten/michigan-wisconsin-game-time-big-ten-championship">likely against Ohio State</a>, with an undefeated record despite not having played anyone who’s any good. If Ohio State beats Wisconsin, there’s no guarantee it will make the playoff; having faced a tough schedule, OSU has a number of impressive wins but also two losses. But if Wisconsin wins, it will almost certainly be chosen for the four-team playoff despite <a href="http://www.uwbadgers.com/schedule.aspx?path=football">playing a schedule</a> that’s bereft of decent competition.</p>
<p>That’s silly! And the division-ization of college football is to blame.</p>
<p>The reason Wisconsin hasn’t played anyone good this year is that it’s a member of something called the “Big Ten West.” The Big Ten West, like the Big Ten East, has seven teams, meaning the Big Ten as a whole is made up of 14 universities. (Please trust that you are not the first person to recognize that this is deeply stupid.) The West is currently weaker than the East because of both random fluctuation (Michigan State is on an upswing while Nebraska is cratering) and geographical circumstance (the traditional powerhouse East teams in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have denser local populations to draw talent from than West squads like Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota). Each Big Ten team plays the other six teams in its division every year, but only three of the seven teams from the opposite division. This year, that arrangement has allowed the Badgers to dodge tough matchups against the Big Ten’s three highest-ranked non-Wisconsin teams: No. 9 Ohio State, No. 10 Penn State, and No. 17 Michigan State. Meanwhile, they’ve played all five Big Ten teams that will go into this weekend with conference records of 2-5 or worse. Divisional imbalance isn’t just a Big Ten thing, either: The SEC East has been so weak in recent years that Florida won it in both 2015 and 2016 despite its program being in such a state of dysfunction that its coach just quit mid-season after a controversy involving <a href="https://deadspin.com/report-florida-believes-it-can-fire-jim-mcelwain-with-1819945550">possibly made-up death threats</a>.</p>
<p>Why, then, do we have divisions? What was wrong with the Big Ten having 10 teams <a href="http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/6833142/big-ten-conference-use-9-game-league-schedule-football-2017">that all (mostly) played each other</a> every year? For that you can blame the conference “realignment” which began in 2010—a misleading term, given that its primary effect wasn’t just shuffling schools around, but rather shifting schools from smaller conferences into larger ones to expand the so-called “Power 5” (the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big 12, and Pac-12). “Conference bloat” would probably be a more accurate description. Three of those conferences now have 14 members, while the erstwhile Pac-10 became the Pac-12. (As recently as the late 1970s, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-12_Conference#Pacific-8">it was the Pac-8</a>.) With that many teams, a true round-robin schedule isn’t feasible. The solution: Put the teams into two divisions whose winners face off in a post-season title game.</p>
<p>The division-ization of college football—or, as I call it, the story of How Rutgers Happens to Good People—has fundamentally changed what used to be a regional sport. Before the Bowl Championship Series and now the four-team playoff, we could very easily identify the best teams in the South and the Midwest and the Far West, because they all played each other. It was much more difficult to figure out the best team in the country. Now, it’s somehow easier to identify the best team in the country—it’s hard to fake your way through a four-team playoff—than it is to identify the best team in each region. We have no idea if Wisconsin is the best team in the Big Ten, because Wisconsin hasn’t played any of the other good teams in the Big Ten. This is an odd state of affairs.</p>
<p>Why, then, did we have realignment? For that you can blame the filthy allure of television money. Conference TV deals are mega-bucks stuff, and conferences that have higher-profile members and an annual conference championship game make the biggest bucks of all. (The Big Ten’s latest deal could end up paying out <a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/bigten/post/_/id/140812/coaches-revenues-pushing-big-ten-toward-top">more than $50 million to every school in the conference</a> every year.) Thus did we see, beginning in 2010, a five-way competition to poach and add as many name-brand teams as possible. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Big_12_Conference#Conference_realignment">The Big 12 lost</a> Colorado to the Pac-12, Nebraska to the Big Ten, and Texas A&amp;M and Missouri to the SEC. The conference in turn brought on two feisty programs, TCU and West Virginia, that had recently come to national prominence. (Yes, the Big 12 is now made up of 10 universities. Please trust that you are not the first person to recognize that this is <em>also</em> deeply stupid.)</p>
<p>But not every expansion move was ingenious, brand-wise. In 2012, the Big Ten made the not-obviously-lucrative choice to add football non-powerhouses Maryland and Rutgers, seemingly on the theory that, hey, everyone else has 14 teams, so why not keep up while expanding the footprint of the Big Ten Network into two big media markets on the East Coast? And that’s how you end up with, say, Ohio State obliterating Rutgers—Rutgers! It’s in New Jersey!—every year and only occasionally clashing on the frozen tundra of the Midwest with the beefy young men of Wisconsin, as God intended. Ohio State first played Wisconsin in 1913; it first played Rutgers 101 years later. On the television front: While the Big Ten Network did end up getting carried in New York, that’s only because sports channels are still being subsidized by non-sports-viewers who pay for one-size-fits all cable packages, an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-30/espn-has-seen-the-future-of-tv-and-they-re-not-really-into-it">inefficient, pre-cord-cutting model for selling TV content that’s on its way out</a>.</p>
<p>There’s one more slice of the cheese wheel here, though, for which Wisconsin must in part blame itself: its nonconference schedule. Every “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Division_I_Football_Bowl_Subdivision">Football Bowl Subdivision</a>” (what used to be called Division I-A) school gets to schedule three out-of-conference games against anyone it wants. When the sport’s “playoff” consisted of nothing more than a one-off title game between what a bunch of people and computers deemed the nation’s top two teams—as was the case as recently as 2014—it was tough to get selected as one of those two teams unless you were undefeated. That provided an incentive to schedule out-of-conference patsies, cupcakes, and pushovers. Wisconsin has done this egregiously, and its nonconference schedule this year was characteristically uninspiring: Utah State, Florida Atlantic University, and BYU, none a consistent top 25 program. If you’re going to ask national pundits and fans for <a href="https://badgerofhonor.com/2017/11/07/wisconsin-football-disrespected-in-cfp-poll-again/">RESPECT</a>, your best nonconference opponent can’t be the FAU Owls. (For what it’s worth, nonconference schedules have generally been improving now that the four-team playoff allows more one-loss, and maybe sometimes two-loss, teams to have a shot at a national title.)</p>
<p>Respect and 25 cents will buy you a phone call, though, if you have two losses and you’re comparing your playoff chances to those of an undefeated Big Ten champ. Enough other teams that are <a href="http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/ncaa">probably about as good as Wisconsin</a> have already lost twice (the friendly fire has been especially rough in the Pac-12) that the Badgers will almost certainly make the playoff if they win the Big Ten title game, a made-for-TV affair played in Indianapolis’ NFL stadium that’s typically low on atmosphere and light on <a href="https://www.stubhub.com/2017-big-ten-championship-football-tickets-2017-big-ten-championship-football-indianapolis-lucas-oil-stadium-12-2-2017/event/103032321/?sort=price+asc">ticket sales</a>.</p>
<p>But you know what? I’ll probably watch the Big Ten title game, as contrived as it is, just like I’ve watched all or part of three Rutgers games this year—I’m a junkie with a college football problem and I can’t help myself. People like me make realignment profitable, which is why big conferences and weird unbalanced divisions are here to stay. If we want to complain about who Wisconsin has played lo these fall Saturdays, we first need to examine our own Saturday behavior.</p>Fri, 17 Nov 2017 21:33:32 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/divisions_are_ruining_college_football_and_there_s_nothing_we_can_do_about.htmlBen Mathis-Lilley2017-11-17T21:33:32ZCollege football divisions dilute traditional rivalries and reward weak schedules. And there’s nothing we can do about it.SportsDivisions Are Ruining College Football, and There’s Nothing We Can Do About It &nbsp;&nbsp;100171117015footballBen Mathis-LilleySports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/divisions_are_ruining_college_football_and_there_s_nothing_we_can_do_about.htmlfalsefalsefalseDivisions are ruining college football, and there’s nothing we can do about it:This is the story of How Rutgers Happens to Good People.Gene Sweeney Jr./Getty ImagesWisconsin Badgers mascot Bucky Badger performs during a game between the Badgers and the BYU Cougars on Sept. 16 in Provo, Utah.Smart Coaches Don’t Punthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/nfl_coaches_are_making_better_fourth_down_decisions.html
<p>The lowest-hanging fruit in the NFL’s analytics revolution is for coaches to keep their offenses on the field on fourth-and-1. As pro offenses have become more effective, the state of <em>being on offense</em> has become increasingly valuable. Consider that in <a href="http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestatsoff1999">1999</a>, NFL teams averaged 1.56 points and 26.3 yards per drive while turning the ball over on 15 percent of drives. Compare those numbers to <a href="http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestatsoff2016">2016</a>, when teams averaged 1.97 points and 31.6 yards per drive and saw fewer than 12 percent of drives end on turnovers. Punting on fourth-and-1 has never been a worse idea.</p>
<p>While we’ve known for a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/upshot/4th-down-when-to-go-for-it-and-why.html">long time</a> that going for it on fourth-and-short is the wise move, NFL coaches have typically eschewed this aggressive approach. Are coaches getting any smarter? I took a shot at answering that question in August, analyzing <a href="http://www.footballperspective.com/teams-are-slightly-more-aggressive-than-they-used-to-be-on-4th-down/">fourth-and-1 decisions</a> that fell within the following three constraints:</p>
<ul>
<li>The decision must have come in the first three quarters before end-of-game factors encourage or discourage aggressive play.</li>
<li>The offense had to be between its own 40-yard line and its opponent’s 40-yard line, so kicking a field goal wasn’t an option, but the team wasn’t so close to its own end zone as to make fourth down conservativism a defensible move.</li>
<li>The game needed to be competitive, defined as within 10 points, to ensure the scoreboard wasn’t the primary factor dictating those decisions.</li>
</ul>
<p>From <a href="http://www.footballperspective.com/teams-are-slightly-more-aggressive-than-they-used-to-be-on-4th-down/">1994–2004</a>, teams went for it on these fourth-and-1 situations 28 percent of the time. From 2005–2014, that number ratcheted up, with teams going for it 35 percent of the time. And in 2015 and 2016, offenses stayed on the field for these fourth downs more than 40 percent.</p>
<p>That trend is still holding halfway through the 2017 season.&nbsp;Admittedly, because of those three limiting factors, and because fourth-and-1 plays aren’t that common, the data set here isn’t very large.&nbsp;Through nine weeks, teams have <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/play_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=summary_all&amp;year_min=2017&amp;year_max=2017&amp;game_type=R&amp;game_num_min=0&amp;game_num_max=99&amp;week_num_min=0&amp;week_num_max=99&amp;quarter%5B%5D=1&amp;quarter%5B%5D=2&amp;quarter%5B%5D=3&amp;tr_">faced 24 fourth-and-1 decisions</a> between the 40-yard lines in the first three-quarters of tight games. (This week’s Thursday night game between Seattle and Arizona is not included in these calculations.) Teams have punted 14 out of those 24 times. While that may not sound great, that 42 percent rate is consistent with what we saw in 2015 and 2016.&nbsp;Slowly but surely, teams are getting more aggressive on fourth downs, even if they are still falling far short of how aggressive they <em>should </em>be. Given the constraints I laid out, a rational coach would go for it on fourth-and-1 pretty much every single time.</p>
<p>Coaches who have gone for it in these situations have gotten some positive reinforcement this year, as <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/play_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=summary_all&amp;year_min=2017&amp;year_max=2017&amp;game_type=R&amp;game_num_min=0&amp;game_num_max=99&amp;week_num_min=0&amp;week_num_max=99&amp;quarter%5B%5D=1&amp;quarter%5B%5D=2&amp;quarter%5B%5D=3&amp;tr_">teams converted on 8 of the 10 fourth-down attempts</a> in my data set. Going for it in these cases is the optimal decision, even if that decision looks bad in hindsight following a failed attempt. But seeing good process yield good results is likely to encourage rational behavior around the league.</p>
<p>Consider the matchup in Week 3 between the 0–2 New York Giants and 1–1 Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles won on a last-second, 61-yard field goal and haven’t lost since. Meanwhile, the loss all but ended the Giants’ postseason dreams, and New York has since collapsed to 1–7.</p>
<p>Although that long field goal received most of the attention, Philadelphia wouldn’t have been in a position to win the game without some aggressive early game decisions.&nbsp;In the first quarter, the Eagles had fourth-and-1 from their own 47-yard line. Quarterback Carson Wentz took a quarterback sneak 2 yards up the middle for the first down, keeping alive an eventual 18-play, 90-yard touchdown drive. In the third quarter, with&nbsp;Philadelphia still leading 7–0, the Eagles went for it on the Giants’ 45-yard line, with Wentz again sneaking ahead for the first down. Four plays later, the Eagles were in the end zone. Those two touchdown drives only happened because head coach Doug Pederson—with the support of an owner, Jeffrey Lurie, who has <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/eagles/doug-pederson-fourth-down-philadelphia-eagles-jeffrey-lurie-20170929.html">expressly supported</a> such aggressive tactics—made the right decisions on fourth down.</p>
<p>All 10 times a team has gone for it in these situations, the offense has called a running play. That includes three quarterback sneaks (all by Wentz), four carries by a running back, two handoffs to a fullback, and a Russell Wilson read-option play where he ran for 9 yards. A 100 percent run rate is obviously extreme, although not totally unexpected in a sample of just 10 plays.&nbsp;From <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/play_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=summary_all&amp;year_min=1994&amp;year_max=2016&amp;game_type=R&amp;game_num_min=0&amp;game_num_max=99&amp;week_num_min=0&amp;week_num_max=99&amp;quarter%5B%5D=1&amp;quarter%5B%5D=2&amp;quarter%5B%5D=3&amp;tr_gtlt=lt&amp;minutes=15&amp;seconds=0&amp;down%5B%5D=4&amp;yds_to_go_min=1&amp;yds_to_go_max=1&amp;yg_gtlt=gt&amp;field_pos_min_field=team&amp;field_pos_min=40&amp;field_pos_max_field=opp&amp;field_pos_max=40&amp;end_field_pos_min_field=team&amp;end_field_pos_max_field=team&amp;type%5B%5D=PASS&amp;type%5B%5D=RUSH&amp;no_play=N&amp;turnover_type%5B%5D=interception&amp;turnover_type%5B%5D=fumble&amp;score_type%5B%5D=touchdown&amp;score_type%5B%5D=field_goal&amp;score_type%5B%5D=safety&amp;margin_min=-10&amp;margin_max=10&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=LE&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=LT&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=LG&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=M&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=RG&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=RT&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=RE&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=SL&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=SM&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=SR&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=DL&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=DM&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=DR&amp;order_by=yards">1994–2016</a>, teams rushed on 84 percent of the plays in these situations. (That likely includes a few called pass plays that turned into quarterback scrambles.) That rate holds true from <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/play_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=summary_all&amp;year_min=2013&amp;year_max=2016&amp;game_type=R&amp;game_num_min=0&amp;game_num_max=99&amp;week_num_min=0&amp;week_num_max=99&amp;quarter%5B%5D=1&amp;quarter%5B%5D=2&amp;quarter%5B%5D=3&amp;tr_gtlt=lt&amp;minutes=15&amp;seconds=0&amp;down%5B%5D=4&amp;yds_to_go_min=1&amp;yds_to_go_max=1&amp;yg_gtlt=gt&amp;field_pos_min_field=team&amp;field_pos_min=40&amp;field_pos_max_field=opp&amp;field_pos_max=40&amp;end_field_pos_min_field=team&amp;end_field_pos_max_field=team&amp;type%5B%5D=PASS&amp;type%5B%5D=RUSH&amp;no_play=N&amp;turnover_type%5B%5D=interception&amp;turnover_type%5B%5D=fumble&amp;score_type%5B%5D=touchdown&amp;score_type%5B%5D=field_goal&amp;score_type%5B%5D=safety&amp;margin_min=-10&amp;margin_max=10&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=LE&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=LT&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=LG&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=M&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=RG&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=RT&amp;rush_direction%5B%5D=RE&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=SL&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=SM&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=SR&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=DL&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=DM&amp;pass_location%5B%5D=DR&amp;order_by=yards">2013–2016</a>, too.&nbsp;Given the decision to be aggressive by keeping the offense on the field, it seems coaches tend toward conservative play-calling.&nbsp;If a pass fails, it’s easy to blame the coach; if the run fails, it’s easy to blame the offensive line.</p>
<p>For comparison’s sake, we can look at what teams do in the exact same situation—the game within 10 points, between the 40-yard lines, first three quarters—but on <em>third</em>-and-1.&nbsp;Since 1994, teams have called a <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/play_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=summary_all&amp;year_min=1994&amp;year_max=2017&amp;game_type=R&amp;game_num_min=0&amp;game_num_max=99&amp;week_num_min=0&amp;week_num_max=99&amp;quarter%5B%5D=1&amp;quarter%5B%5D=2&amp;quarter%5B%5D=3&amp;tr_">rushing play 77 percent</a> of the time in that scenario. On those rushing plays (which, again, include a few quarterback scrambles), teams have picked up a first down 71 percent of the time and averaged 3.2 yards per play while scoring a touchdown just 0.3 percent of the time. On passing plays, teams have <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/play_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=summary_all&amp;year_min=1994&amp;year_max=2017&amp;game_type=R&amp;game_num_min=0&amp;game_num_max=99&amp;week_num_min=0&amp;week_num_max=99&amp;quarter%5B%5D=1&amp;quarter%5B%5D=2&amp;quarter%5B%5D=3&amp;tr_">gained a first down 59 percent</a> of the time and gained an average of 7.6 yards and scored a touchdown on 2.2 percent of plays. In other words, passing has a lower success rate but carries a more substantial reward.</p>
<p>From a game-theory perspective, even if a running play is the superior call, it will never be optimal to call runs 100 percent of the time. After all, a predictable offense is a defense’s best friend. But again, there’s another factor at play: When a coach goes for it on fourth-and-1 and the pass falls incomplete, that coach is going to be criticized 100 percent of the time.</p>
<p>A fear of criticism helps explain why a majority of teams will still punt in this situation, even as the ratio of punting to going for it inches closer to 50-50. That ratio would be even closer if Marvin Lewis wasn’t running things in Cincinnati. <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/201709140cin.htm">In the Bengals’ Week 2 game</a> against the Houston Texans, Lewis sent out the punting unit twice in the first half on fourth-and-1, first at the Texans’ 46-yard line and later at the Bengals’ own 42. Passing up makeable fourth-down attempts early in the game often forces teams to be more aggressive later on. Trailing 10–6 in the third quarter, Lewis wisely kept his offense on the field for a fourth-and-2 at the Houston 19-yard line; the Bengals converted but still settled for a field goal. Later, down 13–9, the Bengals had to go for it on fourth-and-9 with 1:13 remaining; the pass sailed incomplete, and the Texans won the game.&nbsp;Knowing what he did then, I suspect Lewis wished he’d gone for it on fourth-and-1.</p>
<p>The coach that Lewis and his NFL brethren should look to for inspiration is Philadelphia’s Pederson—one of the front-runners for the NFL’s coach-of-the-year award.&nbsp;Overall, the Eagles have faced 13 different fourth-and-1 situations this year. They’ve <a href="https://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/play_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=summary_all&amp;year_min=2017&amp;year_max=2017&amp;team_id=phi&amp;game_type=R&amp;game_num_min=0&amp;game_num_max=99&amp;week_num_min=0&amp;week_num_max=99&amp;quarter%5B%5D=1&amp;quarter%5B%5D=2&amp;quarter">gone for it seven times</a> and have converted all seven. With results like that, expect Philadelphia to keep being aggressive and for that to remain the smart decision.</p>Fri, 10 Nov 2017 17:01:12 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/nfl_coaches_are_making_better_fourth_down_decisions.htmlChase Stuart2017-11-10T17:01:12ZThe statistics say teams should go for it on fourth down. Are NFL teams finally wising up?SportsNFL Coaches Are Making Better Fourth-Down Decisions. They Still Have a Long Way to Go.100171110006footballnflChase StuartSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/nfl_coaches_are_making_better_fourth_down_decisions.htmlfalsefalsefalseNFL coaches are making better fourth-down decisions. They still have a long way to go:The stats say go for it. Most coaches still say punt.Jeff Zelevansky/Getty ImagesHead coach Doug Pederson of the Philadelphia Eagles during a preseason game against the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium on Aug. 31 in East Rutherford, New Jersey.Magic 8-Ballhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/what_the_orlando_magic_tell_us_about_the_nba_s_crazy_start.html
<p>Last season, the Orlando Magic weren’t designed for this NBA. They were built like a hit man suffering from gout, with three centers slowly administering bruises and clogging up play. Eight games into this NBA season, the Magic are tied for the best record in the NBA—they are, somehow, a blistering offensive supernova that is also a model of efficiency.</p>
<p>It’s not just Orlando; the whole league is acting a little strange. The Cavaliers are a sloppy mess, the Warriors are discombobulated, and the Eastern Conference is showing surprising signs of life. It would be reckless to jump to too many conclusions so early in the season, but it’s worth pausing League Pass for a moment to consider the absurdity of it all.</p>
<p>The wild start reflects the NBA’s new reality. The Magic, like the rest of the league, have adapted to play fast. High-octane small ball is no longer in the future—we’re living it. As ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz points out, the 2004 Phoenix Suns played at a pace that was considered to be untenably quick and relentless at the time. Today, those Suns would be one of the slowest teams in the NBA.</p>
<p>For the Magic, getting faster meant overhauling a&nbsp;center-heavy team of plodding klutzes, in favor of a pace-and-space offense.&nbsp;The team traded away center Serge Ibaka late last season, and coach Frank Vogel has opted to leave players like the defensive-minded Bismack Biyombo on the bench for longer periods of time. The Magic play with the third-fastest pace of any team in the league and&nbsp;boast the second–most efficient offense in the league (trailing only the Warriors).</p>
<p>As a result, their young frontcourt of Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic is taking—and making—<em>a lot </em>of threes. Gordon’s play is especially stunning. The fourth-year power forward is averaging 21 points and 9 rebounds per game while making 58 percent of his three-point attempts. A remedial knowledge of statistics tells me that Gordon’s long-distance shooting is likely to regress, given that he has a career mark of just 30 percent from behind the arc. But he’s nonetheless showing signs that, given space on the floor, he can be a very effective modern big man. (If he <em>does</em> keep this up, then Orlando-area sculptors should break out the modeling clay and start preparing for statuary.)</p>
<p>High-volume shooting offenses are more prone to wild swings, and much of this season’s unpredictability can be traced to teams that are flinging shots at a similar pace to the Magic. Eastern Conference squads with low expectations are playing fast and loose, injecting some life into a conference that was supposed to be<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/a_howard_hughes_inspired_plan_to_burn_the_nba_to_the_ground_and_start_over.html"> historically bad</a>.&nbsp;Five of the league’s top 10 most efficient offenses are in the East, and neither Boston nor Cleveland—last year’s conference finalists—are on that list. Members of this&nbsp;petite bourgeoisie&nbsp;have shown they are more than willing to take 90 shots a game like the Golden State Warriors even if their jerseys happen to read “Brooklyn Nets” or “Indiana Pacers.”</p>
<p>For the league to remain on its current helter-skelter course, these kinds of teams will need to keep making baskets. It’s a lot to ask! Most of them will come down to Earth at some point. But if they keep taking shots at a blistering clip, anything can happen. Just ask the Orlando Magic.</p>Fri, 03 Nov 2017 21:39:38 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/what_the_orlando_magic_tell_us_about_the_nba_s_crazy_start.htmlNick Greene2017-11-03T21:39:38ZWhat Orlando tells us about the NBA’s crazy start.SportsWhat the Orlando Magic Tell Us About the NBA’s Crazy Start100171103019nbabasketballNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/11/what_the_orlando_magic_tell_us_about_the_nba_s_crazy_start.htmlfalsefalsefalseWhat the Orlando Magic tell us about the NBA’s crazy start:Just keep shooting.Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Keith Allison/Wikipedia and Mike/Wikipedia.Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic of the Orlando Magic.The World’s Best Three-on-Three Basketball Playerhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/dusan_bulut_aka_mr_bullutproof_is_the_world_s_best_three_on_three_basketball.html
<p>Growing up in Novi Sad, Serbia, Dusan Domovic Bulut fantasized about hitting a game-winning shot in the NBA. The point guard would watch old games on well-worn VHS tapes, figuring out how to mimic the moves of Allen Iverson and Jay Williams. In his dreams, he’d add his own personal twist to Iverson’s crossover, tossing in a brief hesitation to make his defender stand up before driving past him or rising up for a game-winning jumper.</p>
<p>Bulut never made it to the NBA, but his career hasn’t been anything close to a failure. The 32-year-old Serbian, the best three-on-three basketball player in the world, is living out his dreams on a different stage. In <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_FIBA_3x3_World_Championships">last year’s FIBA World Cup final</a>, he squared up against the United States’ Myke Henry. Deep beyond the three-point line on the right wing, the 6-foot-3 Bulut froze the taller defender, pivoted off his left leg, and skied into the air. His long three splashed the net. Bulut and Serbia were the champions of the world.</p>
<p>Although Americans’ basketball dominance dates back to the age of the peach basket, Serbia’s win wasn’t an upset. Since 2012, when FIBA launched both its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIBA_3x3_World_Cup">3x3 World Cup</a> and <a href="http://www.fiba.basketball/3x3worldtour/2017">3x3 World Tour</a>, Bulut’s teams—the Serbian national team and his club team Novi Sad Al-Wahda—have won a combined five titles and amassed a 77–15 record in world tour play. (Those squads share identical rosters, while the players split time between Serbia and the United Arab Emirates, home of the club’s sponsor.)</p>
<p>Bulut has spent much of 2017 as FIBA’s top-ranked three-on-three player, an algorithmic honor that measures points scored as well as game results. Although he <a href="https://fiba3x3.com/en/rankings/individual.html">dropped to the fourth spot</a> in the rankings after suffering an ankle injury, he remains the best offensive player in FIBA three-on-three. As adept at shooting threes as he is attacking off the dribble, Bulut’s strength and size enable him to bully past defenders and get to the rim. Opponents also can’t afford to help and double Bulut. His Serbian team boasts multifaceted three-point marksmen Marko Zdero and Dejan Majstorovic (No. 1 in the FIBA rankings) as well as Marko Savic (No. 2), a burly do-it-all 6-foot-5 forward who’s something like the Serbian Draymond Green.</p>
<p>The foursome are the biggest fish in the still small-ish pond of international three-on-three basketball. “They play such a cerebral brand of basketball, and they’ll put you on a table and dissect you,” says Kyle Montgomery, who announces games for FIBA. Novi Sad, though, isn’t destroying the competition by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU0BebHh5LY">running the picket fence</a>. Two times in recent months, Bulut—whose FIBA-approved nickname is <a href="https://twitter.com/mrbullutproof?lang=en">Mr. BullutProof</a>—has embarrassed opponents with a move of his own creation: <a href="https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/pg7bnm/check-out-this-crazy-shammgod-turned-nutmeg">the Shammgod nutmeg</a>.</p>
<p>Bulut’s team is considered a lock to win its third world tour title in Beijing this weekend. “Whatever adjustments you have, Novi Sad Al-Wahda has already adjusted to that adjustment,” says John Rogers Jr., head of the investment firm Ariel Investments and sponsor of an American professional three-on-three team. (Rogers is probably best known <a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/4537/the-mutual-fund-executive-who-beat-michael-jordan">for reportedly beating</a> Michael Jordan in a game of one-on-one at a fantasy camp.) Or, as Piotr Renkiel, a guard for the world tour squad Krakow puts it, “The first step to beating Novi Sad Al-Wahda is actually believing you can beat them.”</p>
<p>Although Bulut and his teammates have mostly triumphed in obscurity, they’ll soon have the chance to win a gold medal. Three-on-three basketball—FIBA styles it as 3x3—will debut as an Olympic sport in 2020. Serbia’s quartet, all of whom are in their 30s, will likely be considered the favorites to stand at the top of the podium in Tokyo, assuming LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant choose not to team up. Although Rogers is in contact with USA Basketball, he says he has no idea what the process to qualify for the 2020 Games will be. “My hope is players will find their own teammates and those that compete are chosen based on how they’ve done in all the tournaments during the year,” says Rogers, essentially describing how the FIBA system works stateside today.</p>
<p>On the court, FIBA’s three-on-three rules dictate that each possession lasts 12 seconds, and the ball must be cleared beyond the three-point line regardless of a make, miss, or turnover. A game lasts until a team reaches 21 points or 10 minutes have elapsed. For players coming from the full-court game, the most difficult adjustment is getting used to the basketball itself, which is the size of a women’s ball but weighted like a men’s one. There’s also the fouling. “If you played as rough on any playground in the United States as you can in FIBA three-on-three, someone would get arrested for assault,” says Craig Moore, who suits up for Rogers’ Ariel Investments squad.</p>
<p>Unlike their competitors, weaned on five-on-five action, the Serbians haven’t been forced to adjust their style of play. “You have to have your own instincts and creativity,” Bulut says. “You need to recognize movement in a matter of seconds and act. Thinking too much is the biggest problem for five-on-five players.”</p>
<p>The world’s top player learned the game alongside his teammates Savic and Zdero in a neighborhood of Novi Sad known as the Bronx. “We would collect money to pay for the net as kids but then get kicked off the court by old players,” Savic told <em>Vice Sports</em> in a 2015 video feature.</p>
<p>From the moment they stepped on their local courts as teenagers, the Serbians immersed themselves in what makes a successful 3x3 team. “That was how I made pocket money in the summer,” says Bulut. Fresh off playing in a Red Bull–sponsored one-on-one tournament at Alcatraz in 2011, he learned FIBA was set to sponsor a three-on-three tournament the following year. He got the old gang back together, and the team’s familiarity and style of play, predicated on ball movement, spacing, and perimeter shooting, has taken them to the top of their sport.</p>
<p>While Novi Sad Al-Wahda has been compared to the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs, their offense is most akin to the one traditionally run by Princeton. With only 12 seconds to execute, there are no set plays, just endless variations of free-flowing motion. “They found an interesting combination of still attacking players one-on-one while still having a good balance of slipping screens and getting easy shots at the rim,” says Steve Sir, the all-time NCAA Division I <a href="https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/leaders/fg3-pct-player-career.html">three-point percentage record holder</a> who played on Saskatoon’s three-on-three team during the 2017 world tour. “You have no idea how deflating it can be to be in a scrap with a team and then give up a wide-open layup, and Novi Sad will do that six times a game.”</p>
<p>“They don’t have some secret sauce,” says Dan Mavraides, who also played on the world tour. “But they are setting a precedent. Everyone looks at their game films to learn how to play and be this successful consistently.”</p>
<p>Three-on-three basketball isn’t Mavraides full-time job—the guard works at an investment firm—nor is it a 24/7 commitment for Sir or Moore. But for Bulut and his teammates, three-on-three pays the bills, thanks to sponsorships from Red Bull and Dubai’s Al Wahda sports club. The financial backing, the Serbians say, gives their squad a huge advantage over competitors struggling to carve out practice time each week. As Savic told <em>Vice Sports</em>, “It’s hard to play at a top level if you’re worried about putting food on the table.”</p>
<p>It’s unclear what sort of investment other countries will be willing to make when the sport’s top prize is a gold medal. (The winning team at each of the seven world tour sites now gets a $20,000 check.) Just as important as money is building an infrastructure for a sport that—notwithstanding the launch of <a href="https://big3.com/">Ice Cube’s Big 3 league</a>—isn’t going to pull in the best American basketball players. “Maybe some G League or high-level Euro players could play,” explains Moore, “but without the benefit of steady three-on-three competition, they’ll be crushed by the European squads.”</p>
<p>Bulut himself <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FMrdsxpyac">talked a bunch of trash</a> in an interview early this year following a tournament in Croatia, saying that the Big 3 was full of old players who’d “wasted their money away” and “look very clumsy to me, judging by their game and static movement.” He added, “Send them our way—just make sure there is health insurance courtside, because their spines and legs will break apart quickly.”</p>
<p>Even though the Olympics aren’t too far off, Bulut says he isn’t “playing solely for the Olympics”—that “even if the sport wasn’t added to the Olympics, I’d still be playing three-on-three.” He has started to visualize what it will be like in 2020, though, just as he used to dream about playing against Allen Iverson and Jay Williams. “I saw in my head that I will bring home a gold medal,” he told me. “I know I will do that.”</p>Fri, 27 Oct 2017 16:54:39 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/dusan_bulut_aka_mr_bullutproof_is_the_world_s_best_three_on_three_basketball.htmlMatt Giles2017-10-27T16:54:39ZIntroducing Serbia’s Dusan Bulut, a five-time world champion and the favorite to win gold in the 2020 Olympics.SportsThe World’s Best Three-on-Three Basketball Player Is a Serbian Nicknamed Mr. Bullutproof100171027012basketballMatt GilesSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/dusan_bulut_aka_mr_bullutproof_is_the_world_s_best_three_on_three_basketball.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe world’s best three-on-three basketball player is a Serbian nicknamed Mr. Bullutproof:Introducing Dusan Bulut.Loic Venance/AFP/Getty ImagesFrance’s Dominique Gentil (left) challenges Serbia’s Dusan Bulut for the ball during their world championships 3X3 basketball semifinal match in Nantes, France, on June 21.Lucky, Good, and Ruthlesshttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/the_houston_astros_players_are_easy_to_love_their_front_office_is_not.html
<p>Branch Rickey once said that luck is the residue of hard work and design. Houston Astros General Manager Jeff Luhnow has taken that maxim one step further: He has a plan <em>and </em>the breaks have gone his way.</p>
<p>The decisive moment of Game 2 of the World Series, which the Astros won 7–6 in 11 innings, might have come in the bottom of the 10<sup>th</sup>. That’s when Chris Devenski’s errant pickoff throw <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/259712016/bizarre-pickoff-contributes-to-wild-game-2/">deflected off umpire Laz D&iacute;az</a>, keeping the potential game-winning run from reaching third base. “Laz was perfectly positioned, right where we wanted him,” explained Astros Manager A.J. Hinch.</p>
<p>While all the design in the world won’t provide for that kind of lucky bounce, the Astros wouldn’t have even made it to the 10<sup>th</sup> without the timely hitting of Carlos Correa and Marwin Gonzalez, and they wouldn’t have won the game without a home run from George Springer in the top of the 11<sup>th</sup>. And consider Alex Bregman, the star of Game 1, albeit in a losing effort. On a night when Clayton Kershaw was nigh unhittable in leading Los Angeles to a 3–1 win, Bregman supplied the foregoing qualifier by <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/259582440/alex-bregman-homers-off-clayton-kershaw/">hitting a fourth-inning home run</a>.</p>
<p>Bregman, a capable shortstop playing third base because he’s blocked by Correa, was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2015 amateur draft. Houston wasn’t the second-worst team in baseball in 2014—the Astros’ 70–92 record entitled them to the No. 5 pick—but the team drafted in that spot as compensation for failing to sign its 2013 first rounder, pitcher Brady Aiken. The Astros had tabbed Aiken with the No. 1 pick, passing over valuable future major leaguers like Carlos Rodon, Kyle Schwarber, Aaron Nola, and Michael Conforto. The parties reportedly had an agreement in principle, but then the Astros got a bad medical report on the high schooler’s arm and reduced their offer to the minimum allowable amount. They also made an offer to their fifth-rounder, high school right-hander Jacob Nix, that was contingent on whatever Aiken chose to do. While the Astros did eventually ratchet their offer to Aiken back up, his agent Casey Close, who also worked with Nix, believed them to be acting in bad faith, and Aiken did not sign. The Astros’ reward for this maneuver: a draft pick that turned into a franchise cornerstone.</p>
<p>The Astros’ design here was within the rules. It was also ruthless. In August, the team also <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/249269512/astros-making-changes-in-scouting-department/">declined to renew the contracts</a> of eight scouts, some of them longtime employees. “Upon hearing about the Astros’ latest layoffs, some rival execs opined that the Astros couldn’t lose enough games for them,” <a href="https://www.fanragsports.com/heyman-astros-results-recent-firings-raise-questions/">wrote Jon Heyman</a>. “While some may not love the Astros for doing things differently or the perception that they are arrogant, some of the dislike now stems from the way they treat their own people.”</p>
<p>In one sense, the Astros are just another front office with an analytics department, trying to add some certainty to the soft elements of baseball decision-making. Some of the Astros’ actions are straight out of the traditional front-office playbook: Teams have always played hardball with draft picks and with young players who aren’t yet eligible for arbitration or free agency, as the Astros did when they <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/19163189/houston-astros-shortstop-carlos-correa-consider-new-multiyear-contract-price-right">unilaterally renewed</a> Correa’s contract at the league minimum this past spring. They also followed what is now standard operating procedure in <a href="http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/system-discourages-teams-like-astros-from-promoting-top-prospects-to-majors-031914">demoting Springer</a> in 2014 following his rejection of a long-term contract; the Cubs manipulated Kris Bryant’s service-time clock the same way.</p>
<p>Conversely, no team has played Russian roulette with its draft picks quite the way the Astros have, and none has cut its scouting staff to the same extent. Under Luhnow, Houston’s front office is populated by brilliant baseball advisers and analysts. (Disclosure: The general manager’s office and the analytics office both employ former colleagues of mine.) The team is also young and scrappy, featuring exciting players like Bregman, Correa, Springer, and Jos&eacute; Altuve. Yet there can also be something cold about the Astros’ devotion to rationalism. Houston forces us to ask ourselves what we want from a baseball team: touchy-feely sentimentality or bloodthirstiness. When a team hasn’t won a World Series in 55 years, it’s probably presumptuous to expect anything but the latter.</p>
<p>For now, the Astros’ story is inconclusive, not just because the World Series is still in progress but because the team has been both lucky and good. The triumphalist view of Astros history works backward from their current high standing and decrees the inevitability of their rise. The best evidence in favor of this perspective comes via the now-famous <a href="https://www.si.com/longform/astros/index.html">2014 <em>Sports Illustrated </em>cover</a> predicting the Astros would win the 2017 World Series. Ben Reiter, the author of the cover story, <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/24/houston-astros-sports-illustrated-world-series-prediction">writes now</a> that, “The most remarkable thing of all about the Astros is this: they told everyone exactly what they were going to do—<em>and then they did it</em>.”</p>
<p>Sure, but just because they said<em> </em>what they were going to do doesn’t mean it had to happen that way. Consider how the team was put together. International signee Altuve and future ace Dallas Keuchel—a seventh-round pick in the 2009 draft—were both in the fold before Luhnow took over. Gonzalez, a utilityman extraordinaire, was acquired via trade on the day Luhnow was hired. At the same time, the club’s lowest-of-the-low finishes put the Astros in strong drafting position. Picking <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?team_ID=HOU&amp;year_ID=2012&amp;draft_type=junreg&amp;query_type=franch_year">first overall in 2012</a>, Houston tabbed superstar shortstop Correa, then added pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. in the supplemental phase of the first round. The first overall pick of <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?team_ID=HOU&amp;year_ID=2013&amp;draft_type=junreg&amp;query_type=franch_year">the 2013 draft</a> brought pitcher Mark Appel, who looks like a bust. If he is, though, that won’t be Luhnow’s problem—he traded Appel and four other players to the Philadelphia Phillies for closer Ken Giles in December 2015.</p>
<p>After that came the business with Aiken that resulted in Bregman, and even if you dislike the process that procured that pick, you have to concede the Astros chose well. The draft makes no guarantees. Springer, the final first-round pick of the old regime (<a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?team_ID=HOU&amp;year_ID=2011&amp;draft_type=junreg&amp;query_type=franch_year&amp;from_type_jc=0&amp;from_type_hs=0&amp;from_type_4y=0&amp;from_type_unk=0">selected 11<sup>th</sup> overall in 2011</a>), was tabbed between Cory Spangenberg and Taylor Jungmann, neither of whom has seen anything close to major league glory. It takes no great stretch of the imagination, then, to posit an alternative reality in which the Astros endured a Kansas City Royals&shy;–like 30 years of wandering the Sinai of the Second Division. During the long exile that preceded that team’s 2014 World Series loss, the Royals lost 100 or more games four times, and in this millennium alone had <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?team_ID=KCR&amp;draft_round=1&amp;draft_type=junreg&amp;query_type=franch_round">12 top 10 picks</a>. Sometimes they made good choices, calling Zack Greinke’s name with the sixth pick in 2002 or selecting Alex Gordon with the No. 2 selection in 2005. They’ve had just as many clean misses, picking the likes of Colt Griffin and Bubba Starling.</p>
<p>The Astros have made two unmitigated mistakes during Luhnow’s tenure, handing a long-term contract to first-base bust <a href="https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/singljo02.shtml">Jon Singleton</a> and giving up on outfielder J.D. Martinez, who has since reinvented his swing and is now an offensive force. This aside, the Astros GM seems to have a perpetually renewable get-out-of-jail-free card. The sheer unlikelihood of the team’s accumulated good fortune—getting rewarded for mistakes like Appel and Aiken; hitting on Springer, Correa, and Bregman; finding a highly valuable player in Gonzalez; Altuve turning into a likely Hall of Famer; Keuchel making the Tom Glavine–like transformation from a 5.00-ERA punching bag to a Cy Young Award winner—argues that luck has played an outsize role in the team’s success.</p>
<p>An economics and <a href="http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/07/q-and-a-jeff-luhnow-astros-gm">engineering major</a> at the University of Pennsylvania, Luhnow could have spent his life as a management consultant (a career he pursued for five years) but ended up in player development instead. Two years ago, Ken Rosenthal <a href="http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/houston-astros-jeff-luhnow-unique-brilliance-drives-rivals-nuts-cardinals-scandal-061615">characterized him</a> as “a baseball outsider who rankled co-workers with his distinctive ideas and sometimes questionable people skills,” someone who “frequently drives people to distraction” and “often elicits animosity in traditional baseball circles.” The dangers of Luhnow derangement syndrome can be seen most clearly in St. Louis. After Luhnow came to Houston from St. Louis in December 2011, Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa <a href="https://deadspin.com/feds-cardinals-hacker-probably-leaked-to-deadspin-as-r-1791778599">broke into the Astros’ player information database</a>, a crime that led him to be sentenced to 46 months in prison.</p>
<p>Even if Luhnow can be caustic, he shouldn’t be condemned for operating within a system he did nothing to create. The Astros were tough with Aiken, but they also were doing what they needed to do to protect the flow of talent to the organization. Similarly, they’d be foolish not to <a href="http://mlb.nbcsports.com/2017/10/22/astros-exemplify-the-player-unfriendly-bent-of-analytics/">control the salaries of players like Altuve, Springer, and Correa</a>—it’s not Houston’s fault that the economics Major League Baseball are stacked against young star players. And the team’s paring of its scouting staff, while perhaps a bit coldhearted, was prompted by a belief that the grizzled road warrior with a radar gun in his hand and a cigar clenched between his teeth has become an anachronism.</p>
<p>Ask your friendly neighborhood management consultant: Business isn’t nice, and modernization has a tendency to leave people behind. Maybe Luhnow isn’t lovable, but he’s built a team that’s hard not to embrace. The Astros’ luck could run out this season and in the years ahead. But for now at least, Houston’s general manager has put his franchise in a position to succeed. You can question the process, but it’s hard to quibble with the results.</p>Fri, 27 Oct 2017 13:25:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/the_houston_astros_players_are_easy_to_love_their_front_office_is_not.htmlSteven Goldman2017-10-27T13:25:00ZThe Houston Astros’ players are easy to love. Their front office is not. Should we care?SportsThe Houston Astros’ Players Are Easy to Love. Their Front Office Is Not.100171027008sportsworld seriesbaseballSteven GoldmanSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/the_houston_astros_players_are_easy_to_love_their_front_office_is_not.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe Houston Astros’ players are easy to love. Their front office is not:What do we want from a baseball team: touchy-feely sentimentality or bloodthirstiness?Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesGeorge Springer and Jose Altuve of the Houston Astros celebrate defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday in Los Angeles.Watch the World Series!http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/watch_the_world_series.html
<p>It’s late October, the only time of year when all big four pro sports leagues are in session. Basketball and hockey have just begun; football, you might charitably say, is getting interesting. I wouldn’t know; I’m watching the World Series.&nbsp;If you’re a fan of physical feats, outsize characters, and the sweet pull of a great narrative—that is to say, if you are a sports fan—you should be watching too.</p>
<p>This year’s World Series matchup seemed likely to produce the best Fall Classic in a half-century. Wednesday night’s <a href="https://www.mlb.com/gameday/astros-vs-dodgers/2017/10/25/526512#game_state=final,game_tab=,game=526512">game</a>, a record-setting home run derby that featured three dramatic, do-or-die comebacks—two successful, one not—proved it has. Wednesday night’s game had it all: <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/10/los-angeles-dodgers-vin-scully-first-pitch-game-2-fernando-valenzuela">moving pregame ritual</a>, an intense pitchers’ duel, an extra-innings slugfest. The fans at Dodgers Stadium went bonkers a solid dozen times, then had their hearts broken. It was the most riveting 4&frac12; hours of sports you’ll ever see. But if you didn’t see it, that’s OK, too. With the best-of-seven series knotted at one, it’s just the time for you to start watching.</p>
<p>I know what you’re thinking: <em>Baseball is slow.</em> Actually, Game 1 was a taut two hours and 28 minutes, significantly shorter than this week’s Patriots-Falcons <em>Sunday Night Football</em> drubbing. Or you might be thinking: <em>Baseball is boring.</em> Game 2 featured seven lead changes and eight home runs, a World Series record. And it was played with <em>style</em>. “We’ll play with a lot of swagger, and let them know we’re here,” said Astros shortstop Carlos Correa. The announcers said he flipped his bat 30 feet in the air after hitting an 10<sup>th</sup>-inning home run Wednesday night.</p>
<p>You may also be thinking: <em>Who the hell are these guys?</em> The Dodgers have Yasiel Puig, the most exciting player in the game to watch, a boisterous Cuban slugger who <a href="https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/demonstrative-takes-by-yasiel-puig/">dances in the batter’s box</a>. Clayton Kershaw is one of the few pitchers whose <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HjkXwjY7Hs">curveball</a> can make your knees buckle from the couch. Their Game 1 hero was the 32-year-old <a href="http://nypost.com/2017/10/25/this-justin-turner-story-shows-don-mattinglys-dodgers-impact/">journeyman-turned-star</a> Justin Turner, who looks like a Wildling and has 14 RBIs in the playoffs. For the first time in franchise history, the Dodgers had <em>six</em> players hit more than 20 home runs this season. You can’t sleep on this team in a tight game.</p>
<p>And the Astros? No baseball player is better or shorter than their star, the 5-foot-6 Jos&eacute; Altuve. He’s a walking reminder that baseball is the only major sport that people with non-superhero bodies can not only play, but excel at. The ’Stros get more hits and have fewer strikeouts that any team in baseball, which means more action and less standing around. Only one team hit more home runs. There’s even a Hollywood angle: Their ace, one of the best players of his generation to have never won a World Series, is <a href="https://www.si.com/swim-daily/2017/09/22/kate-upton-supported-justin-verlander-move-houston">getting married to Kate Upton</a>.</p>
<p>You may also be thinking: <em>Who cares?</em> Well, the Astros have been around since 1962 and had never even won a World Series <em>game</em> until Wednesday night. They are the toast of Houston, the country’s fourth-biggest city, still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. Correa, their All-Star shortstop, has been raising money and awareness for his native Puerto Rico.&nbsp;They are scrappy underdogs against the Dodgers, who once again have baseball’s biggest payroll—and it’s not even close. But L.A. is trying to escape its own ghosts. This is the first time the squad has appeared in the World Series since 1988, despite five straight division titles. The Dodgers play in the country’s second-largest city.</p>
<p>Finally, if you’re really a stickler, you may have noticed that baseball’s (blessedly) tight playoff format—and the tippy nature of the game itself—tends to reward streaky teams. That means that merely decent teams on a tear often upend all-time great clubs in the playoffs, leading to poorly matched World Series. Well, not this time: This is the first World Series since 1970 to see two 100-win teams face off—six months’ worth of stellar play that’s carried through October.</p>
<p>Could <strong><em>Slate </em></strong>have told you this on Tuesday, before the first game began under a sweltering blue sky in Chavez Ravine? Yes, but we wouldn’t have had the evidence to back it up. Now we do, in two games that were as engrossing as they were different. The first: a tightly played pitchers’ duel the Dodgers won 3&shy;–1. (No sport makes art of the low-scoring game like this one—don’t tell me you like seeing field goals.) The second: Wednesday’s 11-inning thriller that sportswriters <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/923407908255100928">were</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/mccoveychron/status/923504556490846208">calling</a> the best World Series game in years.</p>
<p>And it’s not over. It’s only just beginning. Game 3 is Friday night, and it’s not too late to get on board.</p>Thu, 26 Oct 2017 19:13:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/watch_the_world_series.htmlHenry Grabar2017-10-26T19:13:00ZIf you like all the things that are great about sports.SportsThis Is the Best World Series in a Half-Century. You’d Be Crazy Not to Watch It.100171026012sportsbaseballmlbmajor league baseballHenry GrabarSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/watch_the_world_series.htmlfalsefalsefalseWhy aren’t you watching the World Series, you fool?Watch the World Series!Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesThe Dodgers’ Charlie Culberson runs the bases after hitting a solo home run in the 11th inning against the Houston Astros in Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday in L.A.Who Is Conspiring to Keep Colin Kaepernick Out of the NFL?http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/colin_kaepernick_should_target_these_seven_teams_in_his_collusion_grievance.html
<p>It is obvious that Colin Kaepernick should be playing in the NFL. Just consider this statistic:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/colin_kaepernick_might_win_his_nfl_collusion_grievance_because_of_trump.html">Kaepernick’s collusion grievance</a> against the NFL lists the league and all 32 teams as respondents. To win his case, though, the out-of-work quarterback needs to show only that two or more NFL teams conspired to keep him unemployed, or that a single team conspired with the league itself to do so. Given that, Kaepernick’s legal team will likely narrow its focus to a handful of teams and owners—the ones it might want to target for deposition and document requests. (The case will be decided by a neutral arbitrator, who will decide what evidentiary maneuvers to allow.)</p>
<p>Who will Kaepernick and his attorneys be looking at most closely? There are at least seven teams it makes sense for them to focus on. Here they are, in alphabetical order.</p>
<p><strong>Baltimore Ravens</strong>: Baltimore is one of the few teams that publicly flirted with signing Kaepernick during the offseason. While the Ravens pondered bringing him on, owner Steve Bisciotti told fans <a href="http://www.baltimoreravens.com/news/article-1/Steve-Bisciotti-Ravens-Had-Talks-With-Colin-Kaepernick-Doing-Research/d2e1250a-2007-4b1d-b9c9-692ab2d406f4">he didn’t like the way Kaepernick had protested</a> but that he supported the quarterback’s right to do so. He described the team’s calculus like this: “I know that we're going to upset some people [if we sign Kaepernick], and I know that we're going to make people happy that we stood up for somebody that has the right to do what he did. Nonviolent protesting is something that we have all embraced.” He then asked fans to “pray” for the team.</p>
<p>The team ultimately opted to keep Ryan Mallett as a backup. Ray Lewis, who in 2000 pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice owing to his role in a murder case, attributed the decision in part to <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/09/06/ravens-ray-lewis-colin-kaepernick-girlfirend-tweet">a tweet sent by Kaepernick’s girlfriend Nessa Diab</a> that depicted Bisciotti and Lewis as characters from <em>Django Unchained</em>. &quot;We were going to close the deal to sign him,&quot; Lewis said on Showtime's <em>Inside the NFL</em>. &quot;His girl goes out and put out this racist gesture and doesn't know we are in the back office about to try to get this guy signed.”<br /> <br /> On Aug. 2, the same day Diab sent that tweet, ESPN <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20226590/baltimore-ravens-coach-gm-support-colin-kaepernick-signing-owner-resistant">reported</a> that “Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh and general manager Ozzie Newsome support the signing of free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick, but they have met resistance from owner Steve Bisciotti.” The team responded that this story was not accurate.</p>
<p><strong>Dallas Cowboys</strong>: Kaepernick’s grievance letter <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/colin_kaepernick_might_win_his_nfl_collusion_grievance_because_of_trump.html">alleges that President Donald Trump acted as a kind of go-between</a> for owners in facilitating his exile from the NFL. Perhaps no owner is closer to Trump—or more influential in the league—than Cowboys honcho Jerry Jones.</p>
<p>ESPN’s <em>Outside the Lines</em> <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20865444/inside-story-happened-players-took-control-nfl-national-anthem">reported</a> earlier this month that 25 NFL owners met at league headquarters to discuss the protests the same day Trump spoke with Jones about the issue. “In the meeting, many owners wanted to speak, but the discussion soon was ‘hijacked,’ in the words of one owner, by Jones, a $1 million contributor to Trump’s inaugural committee fund,” Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham reported. Jones reportedly told the group that he’d spoken with Trump multiple times that day and that the president was not going to back down from his attacks on the league. Jones subsequently said publicly that Cowboys players who protest during the national anthem will be benched.</p>
<p>Kaepernick’s legal team will want to know what exact message Jones conveyed to his fellow owners and what influence it might have had on their thinking about whether to sign Kaepernick and other protesting players.</p>
<p><strong>Miami Dolphins: </strong>In July, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross was asked if Kaepernick was being blackballed for launching a protest movement. His <a href="http://dailydolphin.blog.palmbeachpost.com/2017/07/28/dolphins-owner-stephen-ross-thinks-colin-kaepernick-not-being-blackballed/">response</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
I would sure hope not. I know a lot’s been written about it, but you know owners and coaches—they’ll do anything it takes to win. If they think he can help them win, I’m sure—I would hope they would sign him.
</blockquote>
<p>Nevertheless, after Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill underwent knee surgery in August, the Dolphins chose to bring Jay Cutler out of retirement. And this week, after Cutler suffered a rib injury that should cause him to miss time, the Dolphins <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/dolphins-sign-david-fales-not-colin-kaepernick-for-qb-help-after-cutler-injury/">signed David Fales</a> to back up Matt Moore. Fales has played in one game in his career, completing 2 of 5 passes for 22 yards.</p>
<p>In Kaepernick’s grievance letter, his legal team wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
NFL teams who ran offensive systems favorable to Mr. Kaepernick’s style of play instead employed retired quarterbacks or quarterbacks who had not played in a regular season game in years, and signed them to significant contracts while prohibiting Mr. Kaepernick from even trying out or interviewing for those jobs.
</blockquote>
<p><strong>New England Patriots: </strong>Robert Kraft, like Jerry Jones, has a deep personal connection to Trump and is one of the league’s most powerful owners. In March, he traveled on Air Force One with Trump, who the next day <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/03/20/trump-cites-report-that-nfl-teams-wont-sign-kaepernick-for-fear-of-presidents-tweet/?utm_term=.24a6f1b767a8">bragged about how NFL teams hadn’t signed Kaepernick</a> because they were afraid the president might tweet about the move.</p>
<p>The quarterback and his lawyers will surely want to depose Kraft to ask him what he and Trump discussed, and to whom in the league—if anyone—Kraft might have conveyed that information.</p>
<p><strong>San Francisco 49ers: </strong>Kaepernick hasn’t played for any other team, and he led San Francisco to the Super Bowl in 2013. After starting 11 games for the team in 2016, he opted out of his contract and became a free agent when it became clear <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/05/31/colin-kaepernick-49ers-release-opt-out-john-lynch">the 49ers were planning to cut him</a>. San Francisco is 0–7 this season and changed starters from Brian Hoyer to rookie C.J. Beathard. Here’s what 49ers owner Jed York <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/21083974/san-francisco-49ers-ceo-jed-york-says-quarterback-colin-kaepernick-being-blackballed-nfl-owners">recently said</a> about Kaepernick:</p>
<blockquote>
Obviously, there's the lawsuit that's going on, so it's hard for me to get into any details or really share my opinion, but I don't believe that there's base to that claim that he's being blackballed.
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Seattle Seahawks: </strong>In May, <a href="http://www.khq.com/story/35511302/report-seattle-seahawks-to-meet-with-quarterback-colin-kaepernick">the Seahawks met with Kaepernick</a> to discuss bringing him in as backup to Russell Wilson. Seattle didn’t end up sealing the deal with the former 49er, with coach Pete Carroll <a href="http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/nfl/seattle-seahawks/seahawks-insider-blog/article154162614.html">saying</a>, “He’s a starter in this league … and we have a starter. … I can’t imagine somebody won’t give him a chance to play.”</p>
<p>Carroll also said this of Kaepernick:</p>
<blockquote>
He’s capable of being a championship guy. He’s demonstrated that over years. He’s been up and down in his career, but he’s shown enough ups that you know that he could do that. He presented himself really well.
</blockquote>
<p>The Seahawks currently employ quarterback Trevone Boykin on their practice squad. In 2016, <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/football/news/seahawks-trevone-boykin-pleads-guilty-to-misdemeanor/">Boykin pleaded guilty to resisting arrest</a> after allegedly hitting a police officer. This March, he was <a href="http://www.khq.com/story/35511302/report-seattle-seahawks-to-meet-with-quarterback-colin-kaepernick">charged</a> with misdemeanor marijuana possession and public intoxication when a car in which he was a passenger hit a group of pedestrians, injuring eight people. He is scheduled to appear in court on that charge in November.</p>
<p><strong>Tennessee Titans</strong>: On Oct. 3, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/03/brandon_weeden_gets_colin_kaepernick_s_job.html">the Titans signed Brandon Weeden</a>.</p>Wed, 25 Oct 2017 22:14:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/colin_kaepernick_should_target_these_seven_teams_in_his_collusion_grievance.htmlJeremy Stahl2017-10-25T22:14:00ZThe quarterback should target these seven teams in his collusion grievance.SportsThe Seven Teams Colin Kaepernick Should Target in His Collusion Grievance100171025017nflfootballJeremy StahlSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/colin_kaepernick_should_target_these_seven_teams_in_his_collusion_grievance.htmlfalsefalsefalseColin Kaepernick should target these seven teams in his collusion grievance:The Ravens, Cowboys, Dolphins, and more.Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty ImagesColin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett.The Snap Heard ’Round the Worldhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/gordon_hayward_and_how_we_watch_gruesome_injuries.html
<p>When Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward jumped up for an alley-oop on Tuesday night, the 2017 NBA season was six minutes old. When he landed, it became clear that—barring a miracle—those six minutes are the only ones he’s going to play this season.</p>
<p>Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena has one of the league’s loudest and most frenetic backing tracks—the speakers are constantly blaring music, thumping bass, and piping in sound effects to celebrate the home team’s successes. That all stopped when Hayward fell to the floor. Broadcasters are exceedingly careful not to diagnose injuries from the booth, but TNT’s Kevin Harlan couldn’t help himself. “Hayward broke his leg. Hayward has broken his leg,” he said. “Oh my gosh.”</p>
<p>Video of the injury can be seen&nbsp;below. View at your discretion.</p>
<p>Players on both the Celtics and Cavaliers fanned out and away from the fallen Hayward. Boston’s Jaylen Brown paced with his hands atop his head and his mouth agape. LeBron James slumped on the scorer’s table, and Dwyane Wade fell to one knee. These men had witnessed—and were experiencing—a traumatic event.</p>
<p>TNT showed one close-up of the injury immediately after Hayward tumbled to the floor, and it revealed the gore of the dislocated ankle and fractured tibia scrambled inside his sock. As team doctors administered triage, the broadcast danced between vantage points, carefully avoiding any shots that would further nauseate viewers. Their prudence, however, didn’t stem the flow of images and videos on Twitter and YouTube. In 2017, a single camera shot has infinite reach and duration.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://deadspin.com/two-replays-no-warning-how-broadcasters-handle-grueso-464825147">story by <em>Deadspin</em>’s Barry Petchesky</a>, there is a “rough consensus” among networks that they will air no more than two replays of a particularly gruesome injury. This agreement apparently dates back to 1985, and Joe Theismann’s famous compound fracture on <em>Monday Night Football</em>. Back then, replay technology was relatively novel, and <em>Monday Night Football</em> was the only sports broadcast that used <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/image/339621678/?terms=joe%2Btheismann%2Breverse%2Bangle">12 cameras</a> rather than the standard five or six. Those extra lenses gave ABC a clear view of New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor inadvertently thrusting his knee into the Washington quarterback’s leg and snapping his tibia and fibula, in Theismann’s words, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/sports/football/20-years-later-theismann-revisits-replay.html?_r=0">like a breadstick</a>.”</p>
<p>“Guys, this is ugly,” <em>Monday Night Football</em> producer Bob Goodrich warned the announcers as his team prepped the tape to air. According to the <em>New York Times</em>,&nbsp;the program’s director Chet Forte was overheard saying the footage was “too gruesome to be replayed.” But they showed it anyway. Twice.</p>
<p>Catastrophic injuries shown on live TV, like Theismann’s and Hayward’s and <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/08/something_horrible_just_happened_to_odell_beckham_jr_s_ankle.html">Odell Beckham Jr.’s</a>, all have a certain Dealey Plaza effect: You remember where you were when you first saw them. Sports fans and athletes themselves can tick off a catalog of gruesome moments—a collective memory bank of busted bones and dislocated joints that come flooding back whenever an unlucky soul adds his or her name to the list. “I’ve seen <a href="https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2017/10/18/gordon-haywards-injury-devastated-paul-george-who-quickly-reached-out/777188001/">Paul George when it happened to Paul</a>. I was watching the game with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCsJVz5tx1U">Shaun Livingston when it happened</a>, when he was with the Clippers,” James <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/21059145/boston-celtics-cleveland-cavaliers-well-wishes-gordon-hayward-injury">told reporters </a>after Tuesday’s game. “I was watching NCAA basketball <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/explainer/2013/04/kevin_ware_broken_leg_was_his_televised_injury_the_most_gruesome_in_sports.html">when Kevin Ware was at Louisville</a>.”</p>
<p>These battered and broken athletes become part of an exclusive fraternity of people who’ve had the audible snap of their splintered bones broadcast to millions. Often, as was the case with Ware in 2013, they’ll get a <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000156323/article/joe-theismann-contacts-kevin-ware-after-leg-injury">call from Theismann</a>,&nbsp;offering his support. Both George and Livingston sent tweets to Hayward. While they weren’t the only NBA players to do so, messages from others in the league couldn’t possibly have had the same resonance.</p>
<p>All the incidents James mentioned are YouTube-able, and each is horrendous in its own way. The George injury happened in 2014 at a televised Team USA scrimmage. The then–Indiana Pacers star went to block a layup and landed awkwardly on the stanchion underneath the basket. His lower leg buckled and the bones inside snapped and visibly tented within his skin. The game was immediately canceled. </p>
<p>Shaun Livingston’s own awful injury came in 2007, when he played for the Los Angeles Clippers. Livingston landed awkwardly after going up for a layup, and the impact destroyed much of his left knee. In the immediate aftermath, a doctor at Inglewood, California’s Centinela Hospital Medical Center told him he may have to <a href="http://grantland.com/features/on-career-shaun-livingston-survived-one-worst-injuries-nba-history/">brace for amputation</a>. It’s hard to convey how difficult <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHFs4a-Bb-c">the video</a> is to watch. The in-rim mic that’s supposed to amplify <em>swish</em>es&nbsp;instead picked up Livingston’s screams, and these linger through the replays as the local broadcasters try to make sense of what they’ve just seen and heard.</p>
<p>Livingston, who now plays for the Golden State Warriors, said after the team’s practice on Wednesday that he’s not going to watch the Hayward video: “Seeing something like that, things pop out, it’s not normal, right? It’s like stuff that happens [during] car accidents.”</p>
<p>When Kevin Ware broke his shin during the 2013 NCAA Tournament, some of his teammates on the sideline vomited. His bone punctured his skin and jutted out several inches. CBS showed two replays of the Louisville guard’s injury, and at halftime Greg Gumbel assured viewers they would not be airing any more footage of the open fracture. Regrettably, this slasher-flick image is the first picture that comes up when you Google Ware’s name.</p>
<p>Based on recent history, it seems unlikely Hayward will have much interest in seeing the video we’ve all been cringing at for the past 24 hours. Even though Livingston made a miraculous recovery and became a two-time NBA champion, he has no interest in reliving that old trauma. He has never watched footage of his injury, nor does he ever plan to.&nbsp;Ware, meanwhile, has only watched the video of his leg snapping one time—“and once was enough,” <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/2016-6-23-kevin-ware-louisville-georgia-state/">he wrote </a>in the <em>Players’ Tribune</em>.</p>
<p>It took 20 years before Theismann decided he was ready to see the footage of his compound fracture. In 2005, he watched the <em>Monday Night Football</em> broadcast <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/sports/football/20-years-later-theismann-revisits-replay.html?_r=0">with a reporter</a>.&nbsp;After the second replay, Theismann asked, &quot;How many times do I have to watch this?”</p>Thu, 19 Oct 2017 15:37:44 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/gordon_hayward_and_how_we_watch_gruesome_injuries.htmlNick Greene2017-10-19T15:37:44ZWhen Gordon Hayward broke his leg, he joined an exclusive fraternity of catastrophically injured athletes.SportsGordon Hayward and the Gruesome, Bone-Snapping History of Traumatic Sports Injuries on TV100171019004nbabasketballNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/gordon_hayward_and_how_we_watch_gruesome_injuries.htmlfalsefalsefalseGordon Hayward and the gruesome, bone-snapping history of traumatic sports injuries on TV:Paul George, Shaun Livingston, and Kevin Ware welcome the Celtics forward to a club no basketball players want to join.Gregory Shamus/Getty ImagesThe Boston Celtics’ Gordon Hayward sits on the floor after suffering a gruesome injury while playing in Cleveland on Tuesday.Trump’s Big Mouth May Have Given Colin Kaepernick a Case Against the NFLhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/colin_kaepernick_might_win_his_nfl_collusion_grievance_because_of_trump.html
<p>Colin Kaepernick’s accusation that NFL owners have colluded to keep him out of the league feels true. As more starting NFL quarterbacks get hurt and more <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/03/brandon_weeden_gets_colin_kaepernick_s_job.html">obviously inferior quarterbacks</a> get jobs that might have gone to the former San Francisco 49ers QB, the evidence seems clearer and clearer that he is <a href="https://slate.com/sports/2017/08/colin-kaepernicks-protest-cost-him-his-job-but-started-a-movement.html">being blackballed</a>. But to win <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/15/colin_kaepernick_files_grievance_against_nfl_owners_alleging_collusion.html">the grievance</a> he filed against the league on Sunday, Kaepernick must prove <em>collusion</em> has taken place. Per the league’s collective bargaining agreement, he needs to demonstrate that two or more NFL teams, or one or more team and the NFL itself, acted in concert through an “express or implied” agreement to limit his employment options.</p>
<p>Kaepernick’s legal team will try to clear that bar by pointing at the Oval Office. Their argument, essentially, is that the president served as a go-between in pushing owners to agree to blackball the quarterback for instigating a league-wide protest movement. Consider this passage <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/361682669/2017-10-15-Kaepernick-Arb-Demand-002#from_embed">from Kaepernick’s confidential grievance</a> letter, which was made public by ABC News:</p>
<blockquote>
The owners … have been quoted describing their communications with President Trump, who has been an organizing force in the collusion among team owners in their conduct towards Mr. Kaepernick and other NFL players. Owners have described the Trump Administration as causing paradigm shifts in their views toward NFL players.
</blockquote>
<p>What evidence might Kaepernick draw on to make the case that Trump abetted a league-wide collusive effort?</p>
<p>Some of Trump’s communications with NFL owners are a matter of public record. On March 19, he hosted New England Patriots <a href="http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/03/20/robert-kraft-donald-trump-president-air-force-one-patriots/">owner Robert Kraft on Air Force One</a>. One day later, the president told supporters at a rally in Louisville, Kentucky: “It was reported that NFL owners don’t want to pick [Kaepernick] up because they don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Do you believe that?”</p>
<p>The article Trump seemed to cite in that Louisville speech—<a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2698098-colin-kaepernick-sentenced-to-nfl-limbo-for-the-crime-of-speaking-his-mind">a <em>Bleacher Report</em> piece by Mike Freeman</a>—quoted an unnamed general manager who analyzed why no NFL team had signed Kaepernick. Here is that quote:</p>
<blockquote>
First, some teams genuinely believe that he can’t play. They think he’s shot. I’d put that number around 20 percent.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Second, some teams fear the backlash from fans after getting him. They think there might be protests or [President Donald] Trump will tweet about the team. I’d say that number is around 10 percent. Then there’s another 10 percent that has a mix of those feelings.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Third, the rest genuinely hate him and can’t stand what he did [kneeling for the national anthem]. They want nothing to do with him. They won’t move on.
</blockquote>
<p>The implication there is that the president had helped persuade 10 to 20 percent of the league—three to six teams—not to sign Kaepernick. The quote also suggests that the general manager had discussed Kaepernick’s employment status with officials from other teams. “[Some teams] think showing no interest is a form of punishment,” the team official said. “I think some teams also want to use Kaepernick as a cautionary tale to stop other players in the future from doing what he did.” If it can be proved that any opposing team officials openly or implicitly discussed retaliating against Kaepernick in this way, that certainly sounds like good evidence of collusion.</p>
<p>Trump has also had the ear of one of the NFL’s other most influential owners: Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys. Last month, the president tweeted about a conversation he’d had with Jones:</p>
<p>Shortly after that, Jones said he would <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2737631-jerry-jones-says-a-cowboys-player-who-disrespects-the-flag-wont-play">bench any player</a> who demonstrated during the national anthem and stated that Trump had <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/jerry-jones-trump-told-me-anthem-rules-players-need-consequences-for-protesting/">reminded him</a> about an NFL policy that encouraged players to stand during the anthem.</p>
<p>In addition, ESPN <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/20865444/inside-story-happened-players-took-control-nfl-national-anthem">reported</a> that on the same day Jones spoke with Trump, 25 NFL owners convened at league headquarters to discuss the protests Kaepernick had helped spark. According to ESPN, Jones told his fellow owners that if players were allowed to keep protesting, then Trump would continue to punish the NFL:</p>
<blockquote>
In the meeting, many owners wanted to speak, but the discussion soon was “hijacked,” in the words of one owner, by Jones, a $1 million contributor to Trump’s inaugural committee fund. … The blunt Hall of Famer mentioned that he had spoken by phone, more than once over the past 24 hours, with Trump. Jones said the president, who only a few years ago tried to buy the Buffalo Bills, had no intention of backing down from his criticism of the NFL and its players. Jones—who a day earlier for Monday Night Football in Arizona had orchestrated a team-wide kneeling before the anthem ahead of rising to stand when it started to play—repeated his refrain that the protests weren’t good for the NFL in the long run.
</blockquote>
<p>In the days after that meeting, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell backtracked on his <a href="https://nflcommunications.com/Pages/Statement-From-NFL-Commissioner-Roger-Goodell.aspx">public</a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/28/with_packers_bears_the_nfl_turned_protests_into_an_up_with_people_performance.html">support</a> of protesting players, sending a league-wide memorandum arguing that the “current dispute over the National Anthem is threatening to erode the unifying power of our game.” Goodell also reportedly <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/10/the_nfl_has_a_secret_plan_to_give_donald_trump_exactly_what_he_wants.html">considered a tweak</a> to the league’s operations manual that would have made standing for the anthem obligatory.</p>
<p>It will be up to a neutral arbitrator—reportedly, University of Pennsylvania law professor Stephen Burbank—to determine whether all this information adds up to a strong implicit collusion case. Kaepernick’s legal team, though, won’t necessarily have to rely solely on publicly available evidence.</p>
<p>While Burbank will ultimately decide what evidentiary maneuvers to allow, a source generally familiar with how such arbitration proceedings work told me that Kaepernick’s lawyers might be able to depose those NFL owners who have met with Trump. That source added that Kaepernick’s legal team could request all electronic communications among and between teams about Kaepernick—potentially millions of words of emails, texts, and documents. A third-party electronic discovery vendor would look through this metadata for search terms like <em>Kaepernick</em>, <em>Colin</em>, <em>anthem</em>, <em>protests</em>, and <em>Trump</em>, and provide Kaepernick’s lawyers with relevant evidence. Again, it will be up to the arbitrator to decide whether to allow such a search to go forward. If league and team officials refuse to turn over this information, the arbitrator could use that refusal as grounds to rule adversely against them. (This was what Roger Goodell did as arbitrator when he cited Tom Brady’s <a href="https://deadspin.com/that-would-be-me-thanks-for-clarifying-1720689151">refusal to turn over relevant texts</a> in his decision to suspend the New England Patriots quarterback over <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/15353950/tom-brady-new-england-patriots-four-game-suspension-deflategate-reinstated-appeals-court">deflategate</a>.)</p>
<p>The grievance letter filed by Kaepernick on Sunday puts the NFL and all 32 teams on notice that they “are required by law to preserve all documents, emails, text messages, memoranda, notes, and all other electronically stored information (ESI) which is reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence in this action.” Finding definitive proof in all of that data might not be necessary to prove collusion, though.</p>
<p>Gene Orza, the lawyer who defeated Major League Baseball to the tune of $280 million in an epochal 1980s collusion case, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/17/news/colin-kaepernick-collusion/index.html">told CNNMoney</a> that a “smoking gun was not the basis of that [MLB] decision. Instead it was simply the inference of collusion, that all of [a] sudden not one player who was a free agent was getting an offer.” The NFL uses a “clear preponderance of evidence” standard in its arbitration, though, and MLB did not at that time. This will make beating the league a heavier lift for Kaepernick, as will the fact that he’s currently the lone player who has allegedly been blackballed and is a legitimately controversial figure.&nbsp;Two years ago, for example, Barry Bonds lost his arbitration proceeding after accusing MLB of colluding to blackball him after controversies surrounding his use of performance-enhancing drugs.</p>
<p>William Gould, a former National Labor Relations Board chairman and salary arbitrator for Major League Baseball, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2017/10/16/colin-kaepernick-collusion-grievance-nfl-owners/769500001/">told <em>USA Today</em> that Kaepernick</a> is “going to have to show some kind of pattern—of dealings with the clubs, where clubs were aware that he was willing and able to work, where there was some sort of communication with him and then [those clubs for] unexplained reasons went elsewhere.”</p>
<p>This pattern is precisely what Kaepernick alleges in his grievance:</p>
<blockquote>
NFL teams exhibited unusual and bizarre behavior regarding Mr. Kaepernick’s prospective employment. Multiple NFL head coaches and general managers stated that they wanted to sign Mr. Kaepernick, only to mysteriously go silent with no explanation and no contract offer made to Mr. Kaepernick. Other NFL teams stated they had no interest in Mr. Kaepernick and refused to explain why. NFL teams who ran offensive systems favorable to Mr. Kaepernick’s style of play instead employed retired quarterbacks or quarterbacks who had not played in a regular season game in years, and signed them to significant contracts while prohibiting Mr. Kaepernick from even trying out or interviewing for those jobs.
</blockquote>
<p>We know the NFL is full of quarterbacks who aren’t as good as Colin Kaepernick. We’ll soon find out if this fact means Kaepernick will emerge victorious in arbitration. Perhaps, it will ultimately be President Trump’s words and deeds that help the quarterback score a huge win off the field.</p>Wed, 18 Oct 2017 09:45:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/colin_kaepernick_might_win_his_nfl_collusion_grievance_because_of_trump.htmlJeremy Stahl2017-10-18T09:45:00ZThe president may be key to the quarterback winning his collusion grievance.SportsTrump’s Big Mouth May Help Colin Kaepernick Prove His Collusion Case Against the NFL100171018001nflfootballdonald trumpJeremy StahlSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/colin_kaepernick_might_win_his_nfl_collusion_grievance_because_of_trump.htmlfalsefalsefalseTrump’s big mouth may have given Colin Kaepernick a case against the NFL:One report implies the president had helped persuade 10 to 20 percent of the league—three to six teams—not to sign Kaepernick.Sean M. Haffey/Getty ImagesColin Kaepernick walks to the field before a game against the Los Angeles Rams at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Dec. 24.I Believe That We Must Blow the Whole Thing Uphttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/three_u_s_soccer_obsessives_debate_the_future_of_the_men_s_national_team.html
<p>As you may have heard, the United States failed to qualify for the men’s World Cup finals for the first time <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/may/31/usa-1986-world-cup-qualifying-soccer">since 1986</a>, when the national team consisted of college students and indoor-soccer players. In the wake of the national team’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/sports/soccer/usmnt-trinidad-world-cup.html">2-1 defeat</a> in Trinidad &amp; Tobago on Tuesday, there has been no shortage of takes, some journalistically <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mens-soccer-what-happened-1507753438">dispassionate</a>, others <a href="https://deadspin.com/fuck-all-of-this-1819346770">less so</a>. Countless fans, myself included, exchanged expletive-filled texts and emails with friends.</p>
<p>I asked two of those friends to join me to help make sense of <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/the_u_s_missing_the_world_cup_is_a_cataclysmic_failure.html">the catastrophe</a>. Jonathan Hock is the award-winning director of more than a dozen sports documentaries; his ESPN series <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=inside+u.s.+soccer+march+to+brazil&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=vid&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwii7dD80-vWAhVMKCYKHR8nDGQ4ChD8BQgLKAI&amp;biw=1383&amp;bih=698">Inside: U.S. Soccer’s March to Brazil</a> chronicled the team before the 2014 World Cup. Jon Weinbach, the executive producer of Mandalay Sports Media, produced the Vice Sports short film &quot;<a href="https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/das-american-christian-pulisics-spectacular-rise/5820b5522599a5c754aeef69">Das American: Christian Pulisic’s Spectacular Rise</a>.&quot; Below is an edited and condensed version of our conversation.<em>—Stefan Fatsis</em></p>
<p><strong>Stefan Fatsis</strong>: It’s been three days and I’ve read the postmortems and <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/hang_up_and_listen/2017/10/the_u_s_men_s_national_team_s_world_cup_catastrophe_on_hang_up_and_listen.html">tried to work through</a> the stages of grief and I still feel sick.</p>
<p><strong>Jon Weinbach</strong>: I’ve been a U.S. soccer diehard since the days of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Indoor_Soccer_League_(1978%2525E2%252580%25259392)">Major Indoor Soccer League</a>. I remember when mulleted guys like<a href="http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2014/03/17/12/19/where-are-they-now-mike-windischmann"> </a><a href="http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2014/03/17/12/19/where-are-they-now-mike-windischmann">Mike Windischmann</a> captained our national team. I was in Lyon, France, in 1998 for the U.S. loss to Iran in the World Cup, and thought we couldn’t possibly get any lower.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>We were all at that game. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/soccer/longterm/worldcup98/articles/cupus24.htm">That team was a mess</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach: </strong>And then came Tuesday. By far the worst day in American soccer history. Literally a stomachache and I’m still depressed. I remember watching a World Cup without the United States, and I am a hyper-geek of epic proportions. For my children, who don’t really care about the game yet, not having the U.S. in the World Cup perpetuates all the old tropes that some Americans still have: Soccer is dumb. We suck at it. Why should anyone care?</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> In the few fleeting, rational moments I’ve had since the game, I’ve tried to tell myself not to fall into that trap. Because the tired stereotypes about U.S. soccer have mostly been vanquished. We’re already on the defensive about everything else American these days. Soccer again, too?</p>
<p><strong>Jonathan Hock</strong>: If you’re really being rational, you have to see this as a cataclysm. It is irrational to think that it’s not a big deal, to think that if Clint Dempsey’s late shot is two inches to the left the game is a draw and we’re through to Russia, that it’s all OK. This is <a href="http://www.espnfc.com/team/united-states/660/blog/post/3227056/why-the-us-failed-to-qualify-for-2018-world-cup-in-russia">an utter failure</a>. Soccer in America is very much alive. Major League Soccer is real and growing. The women’s national team is glorious. Youth soccer is a national pastime. But the men’s national team? Dead.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> Let’s be clear: There is no excuse for not qualifying. This isn’t Europe or South America, where a glut of great soccer nations means the likes of the <a href="http://www.espnfc.com/team/netherlands/449/blog/post/3195905/louis-van-gaals-hand-in-netherlands-decline-as-world-cup-miss-looms">Netherlands</a> or <a href="http://www.goal.com/en/news/8/main/2017/10/11/39312142/brazil-3-chile-0-south-american-champions-to-miss-world-cup">Chile</a> will miss the World Cup. Before we do the autopsy, let’s talk about the Trinidad game. Congrats to the Soca Warriors! But while CONCACAF qualifiers on shitty fields in unfriendly environments with suspect refs are challenging, a team of top American soccer players, who play in Germany’s Bundesliga and England’s Premier League, should defeat if not demolish a team of top Trinidadian soccer players, who play for <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WCONNECTIONFC/">W Connection</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Police-fc-522832301062288/">Police</a>, every single time.</p>
<p>What stood out in this game was the utter lack of urgency. It was as if the Americans believed there was no way they wouldn’t qualify because they’re American and entitled to qualify. I mean, check out this GIF of Trinidad’s second goal. Way to hustle, guys.</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach:</strong> T&amp;T had acres of space from the first minute. It was so obvious, even on TV, that this had the makings of a nightmare. From the first minute.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> The United States was chasing lackadaisically and passing listlessly. Michael Bradley, the putative U.S. leader, who played in Serie A in Italy for chrissakes, was turning tail <em>against Trinidad</em>. With the exception of the first five minutes of the second half when wunderkind Christian Pulisic scored, the United States lacked the energy and creativity to break down an opponent perched <a href="http://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-ranking/ranking-table/men/index.html">just ahead</a> of Luxembourg and Madagascar in the world rankings. <a href="http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=20984884">Taylor Twellman might have understated matters</a>.</p>
<p>I think they were half-expecting Mexico and Costa Rica to bail them out by beating Honduras and Panama. No way <em>those</em> guys lose, right?</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach: </strong><a href="http://www.espnfc.com/team/mexico/203/blog/post/3226377/mexico-lose-as-honduras-stay-alive-in-world-cup-qualifying-at-us-expense">We saved Mexico’s ass</a> in 2014 qualifying after we had already qualified. Shocking they couldn’t do the same for us. I’m blaming Trump.</p>
<p><strong>Hock: </strong>Did you see Mexico put its final free kick, from 22 yards out, dead into the wall? They loved laying down to spite us, which is how a proper soccer nation should behave. It may be the beautiful game, but international football is ugly and corrupt, there is zero good sportsmanship (so prized in America), and cheap shots, fake injuries, fan violence, and intimidation are all part of the game. We need to raise players who can flourish in that environment. It’s like trash-talking and roughhousing in playground basketball. If you can’t hang, don’t call “next.”</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> Let’s talk about the roster. The core players who failed to get the job done are old or getting there—Bradley (30), Clint Dempsey (34), Tim Howard (38). More than half the players who went to Trinidad—14 out of 23—were 30-plus. Only four players were between the peak performance ages of 23 and 27, and one of them, Jozy Altidore, has been around forever, since he made his national team debut as a teenager.</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach: </strong>The Bradley-Dempsey-Howard group—they’ve been allowed to linger too long. Good riddance to them. We’ve basically lost a generation because the players who are now roughly 24 to 30 have shit the bed repeatedly, not qualifying for two straight Olympics and not making the national team better.</p>
<p>It’s no coincidence that the core of the 2000 under-23 Olympic team, which finished fourth in Sydney, was Landon Donovan, Josh Wolff, and John O’Brien, plus Frankie Hejduk and Brad Friedel as over-age players. All were hugely important in 2002, when we made that incredible run to the quarterfinals at the World Cup in Japan and South Korea. There’s been nothing like that in the last decade, with new guys achieving international success at the level below the senior national team.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>The United States U-23s didn’t make the last two Olympics. Now the senior men won’t play a meaningful match until 2019. So huge thanks to Timmy and Clint and Michael for the memories—<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/sports/soccer/25soccer.html">stunning Spain</a> in the 2009 Confederations Cup, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbn3rOPmR9w">Algeria miracle</a> in South Africa in 2010, the <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/planet-futbol/2014/07/01/usa-belgium-world-cup-tim-howard-lukaku-green-round-16">crazy thrilling loss</a> to vastly superior Belgium in Brazil in 2014. But they shouldn’t wear the USA uniform again. Give them a framed jersey, a bouquet of flowers, and a Hall of Fame IOU, and let’s move on.</p>
<p>In fact, other than 19-year-old Pulisic, who plays in the Bundesliga, 24-year-old Premier League defender DeAndre Yedlin, 24-year-old Bundesliga striker Bobby Wood, and 24-year-old Bundesliga defender John Brooks, maybe no one who’s been a core player for the U.S. in the last few years should play for the team again. OK, 32-year-old Premier League defender Geoff Cameron—<a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/geoff-cameron-bizarre-usmnt-omission-142458947.html">inexplicably benched</a> against T&amp;T—can stick around to train his replacements.</p>
<p>Notice what those guys have in common? They work in two of the best leagues in the world. I’m really pissed right now, so here’s my rage proposal: From now on, if a player chooses—<em>chooses</em>—to play in Major League Soccer instead of a major European league, he doesn’t get called in to the national team. Last year, Jordan Morris, just out of Stanford, was offered a contract with Werder Bremen of the Bundesliga. He signed instead with the Seattle Sounders because “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/jan/21/jordan-morris-mls-seattle-sounders-werder-bremen">I wanted to play in my hometown</a>.”</p>
<p>That was great for family dinners at the Morris house, and for MLS. But will that kind of narrow thinking—Morris was 21 at the time; experience the world, dude— limit his growth and hence make the national team less good? By contrast, Pulisic went to Borussia Dortmund at 16, <a href="https://twitter.com/si_soccer/status/910597632191549441?ref_src=twsrc%25255Etfw&amp;ref_url=https%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.si.com%25252Fsoccer%25252F2017%25252F09%25252F20%25252Fchristian-pulisic-goal-dortmund-hamburg-bundesliga-usa">starts and scores</a> for the first-place team in Germany, and is on his way to becoming the first American international superstar.</p>
<p><strong>Hock: </strong>I disagree about Morris. He is big and strong and would have protected Pulisic a lot better than Altidore did against Trinidad. He played really well in a few of the qualifiers, set up <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkHXyepwdM">Wood’s goal against Honduras</a> that kept the U.S. alive, scored a big goal in an earlier match, and was 90 percent of their energy in a couple of games. The guy was nonstop.</p>
<p>It’s just a shame that Morris had to come up on a team of selfish, aging players who were scared for their own places on the team (Dempsey, for one). Let’s talk about Morris in four years. Do you want to give the young guys a chance or don’t you?</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach:</strong> Hey, Landon Donovan spurned Germany as a teenager and it worked out OK for him. Also, the U.S. Soccer Federation is too intertwined with MLS to make it <em>punitive</em> to play domestically. The unintended consequence of MLS has been that it has considerably raised the game of Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama. I actually think MLS needs to have more Americans.</p>
<p>We’ve also seen countless examples of how going to Europe can be destructive for American players who don’t play. Look at <a href="https://www.lagalaxy.com/players/sebastian-lletget">Sebastien Lleget</a>, who was doing great for the Los Angeles Galaxy and the national team until he got hurt versus Honduras. He was with West Ham in England and never played. He returned to MLS and what do you know? He can play! Given the politics and money and personalities in global soccer, you have to let guys play where they have the best opportunity to improve—not just based on the reputation of the club.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> But there’s always the unknown of how much better a player would be were he practicing daily with top international clubs versus the motlier collection of talent in expansion-diluted MLS, which will be there to scoop up players like Lleget on the rebound.</p>
<p>But let’s get optimistic. There’s a bumper crop of young American talent. On Thursday, the United States advanced to the knockout stage of the <a href="http://www.fifa.com/u17worldcup/index.html">U-17 World Cup</a> in India. And most of the best young Americans are based in Europe, including 19-year-old Weston McKennie, who just <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2017/09/19/weston-mckennie-schalke-usa-fc-dallas">made his first start</a> for Schalke in the Bundesliga, and 19-year-old Cameron Carter-Vickers, who <a href="https://cartilagefreecaptain.sbnation.com/2017/9/12/16297486/tottenham-hotspur-sheffield-united-cameron-carter-vickers-goal-highlight-bolton-championship">scored in his debut</a> for Sheffield United in England’s second division. Weinbach, you hung with Pulisic for the Vice Sports doc. Surely you see the trend.</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach: </strong>The American soccer development system is far, far, far better today than it’s ever been. It’s kind of a miracle that guys my age (41) plus or minus five years, basically from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOev7CzGu5k">Brian McBride</a> (born in 1972) to Landon Donovan (1982), developed at all, considering there was no domestic league and very little soccer on TV. College isn’t going away, and for the record, lots of guys who’ve succeeded on the national team played college soccer at some point, Yedlin among them. But the NCAA is really a place for B prospects—the best players are being signed by MLS and foreign clubs. Clearly there’s still too much “pay to play” in the suburbs, but the youth national teams feature a bunch of children of African and Latino immigrants, which is a really good sign.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>Grant Wahl’s <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2017/10/11/usa-world-cup-qualifying-failure-us-soccer-gulati-arena">post-T&amp;T analysis</a> in <em>Sports Illustrated</em> was tough and unapologetic. He called for a top-down purge, starting with longtime U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati, the creation of a permanent director of the men’s national team, and, of course, a new coach. In a conference call with reporters on Friday, Gulati took &quot;<a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2017/10/13/sunil-gulati-us-soccer-president-election-decision">full responsibility</a>&quot; for the World Cup horror—but he didn’t resign and refused to rule out running for a fourth four-year term in February. Huh.</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach: </strong>I think there absolutely needs to be a full time USMNT technical director or general manager, and I think seeing women’s national team legend <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Foudy">Julie Foudy</a> as president of the federation, as Wahl suggested, would be smart. The next coach should either be a foreigner with U.S. connections—like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardo_Martino">Tata Martino</a>, the former Argentina and FC Barcelona manager who’s currently coaching Atlanta United in MLS—or a USMNT-er from the “pioneer” era, either U.S. U-20 coach <a href="https://www.starsandstripesfc.com/2017/9/20/16334056/is-tab-ramos-the-favorite-to-replace-bruce-arena">Tab Ramos</a> or Sporting Kansas City manager <a href="https://www.sportingkc.com/club/peter-vermes">Peter Vermes</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>Weren’t we just here? With great fanfare, U.S. Soccer in 2011 hired former Germany star, Germany coach, and California resident Jurgen Klinsmann to bring Deutsche smarts and new-age ideas to American soccer. After losses to Mexico and Costa Rica in the final round of World Cup qualifying, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/sports/soccer/jurgen-klinsmann-fired-us-soccer-coach.html">Klinsmann was fired</a> and replaced by Bruce Arena, who coached the U.S. to the 2002 and 2006 tournaments. Hock, before the 2014 World Cup, you followed Klinsmann around for that ESPN series. How much of the blame for this failure rests with him?</p>
<p><strong>Hock:</strong> A lot. I think Jurgen was smart about talent and had a keen understanding of personnel and matchups. But he was horrible as a leader of men. He was inconsistent and arbitrary in a tactical sense, changing formations and player responsibilities without regard to how much he’d been asking of the players before he changed his mind. The players, who really bought in at first, became confused and untrusting, uncertain that Jurgen would honor their commitment to him by rewarding them with a consistent status on the pitch.</p>
<p>You can’t treat Americans like that. If you ask for something and they buy in, you have to reward them. Jurgen did, then he didn’t, then he did, then he didn’t, and he lost them. That manifested in a lack of “will” from the players on the pitch—not that they weren’t trying to do their best, but they weren’t so thoroughly invested in their task that they could access the very best of themselves. That lasted through the end of the T&amp;T game, and it started under Jurgen.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>And he <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_spot/2014/05/23/landon_donovan_j_rgen_klinsmann_why_the_u_s_coach_never_trusted_america.html">cut Landon Donovan</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Hock: </strong>I think Jurgen reminded the players, in ways that were sometimes subtle and sometimes less so, that he was a better player than any of them would ever be and that his home country was better than theirs would ever be, and that wore them out. A coach is always a parent, and a parent always needs to make his (or her) child feel he (or she) can exceed what the parent accomplished. Jurgen belittled the players when he coached them—probably not deliberately or strategically, but it was just his affect of superiority when he was trying to instruct them. I think he probably wanted to love them and support them, but couldn’t.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>Also, he <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_spot/2014/05/23/landon_donovan_j_rgen_klinsmann_why_the_u_s_coach_never_trusted_america.html">cut Landon Donovan</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Hock: </strong>When Arena took over, it was an old team that couldn’t get it back (as we all see clearly now). If Arena was a great national team coach of a great national program, he would have recognized the problem instantly, filled the team with hungry, young, talented players, coached their asses off through a weak and forgiving CONCACAF region, and qualified for Russia. I mean, what kind of hubris does Arena have that he thought he could trot out the same guys as Klinsmann did, but they’d win because he’s on the sideline and Klinsmann isn’t?</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> As his comments after Trinidad showed—”Nothing has to change,” <a href="http://www.espn.co.uk/football/united-states/story/3226316/bruce-arena-on-united-states-missing-world-cup-we-failed-today">Arena told reporters</a>—he has <em>a lot</em> of hubris. Arena should have resigned on the spot, as any self-respecting international coach would have. He finally departed&nbsp;on Friday, in <a href="http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2017/10/12/19/19/20171013-news-mnt-bruce-arena-resigns-as-us-mens-national-team-head-coach">a statement</a> that tried to walk back those postgame remarks. Not qualifying for the World Cup “certainly is a major setback” and “[q]uestions rightly should be asked about how we can improve.” Thanks for the insight. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.</p>
<p><strong>Hock: </strong>Looks like <a href="https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2017/08/03/david-beckham-moves-closer-finalizing-miami-expansion-club">Beckham United</a> has its coach!<strong> </strong>Maybe there just wasn’t enough quality waiting in the wings, and Arena had no choice but to try to push these old guys over the line. But if that’s the case, it speaks to the failure of the entire system. A failure of vision, a failure to mobilize a nation of soccer-playing children to the purpose of winning a World Cup.</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach: </strong>It was easier in the past to say the problem is youth development. I’m not so sure now. Last year I was in Dallas and saw some of my friend’s son’s game. He plays for the U-9s at FC Dallas. I couldn’t believe how good the kids are. And all the coaches are either former college players or MLS castoffs or Latino guys who played for a junior national team. Not like the dads who coached me on AYSO all-star teams in L.A. in the ’80s.</p>
<p>There are clearly system-wide changes to make, but I think this cycle was the perfect storm of an older generation being left on the field too long, a “missing” generation totally whiffing, and some astoundingly bad coaching decisions all mixed together.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>Brian Sciaretta wrote <a href="http://americansoccernow.com/articles/the-missing-years-u-s-soccer-s-development-gap">a good piece</a> about the lost generation in <em>American Soccer Now</em>. The question is what changes need to happen. The United States might be too big and its youth-sports industrial complex too entrenched to impose a collective national system like Holland and Denmark or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/sports/soccer/iceland-world-cup-qualifying.html">plucky first-time World Cup qualifier Iceland</a>. And soccer doesn’t have the cultural hegemony, or funding, to enable the kind of overhaul <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/may/23/germany-bust-boom-talent">Germany imposed in the 2000s</a>.</p>
<p>As Weinbach noted, coaching, scouting, and talent identification have improved vastly in the last two decades. The change has to come through U.S. Soccer, MLS clubs, and grassroots urban programs like a couple in D.C., where I live, that <a href="https://www.dcscores.org/">get kids playing</a> early and then <a href="http://www.opengoalproject.org/">funnel talent upward</a>. And we probably need a better system for plucking and nurturing the very, very best 14- to 19-year-olds, boys and girls.</p>
<p><strong>Hock:</strong> If the United States is too vast and unwieldy to reinvent the development system, how’s this for an experiment? Take one area around the size of Holland or Belgium—say Los Angeles, which has 20 million people. Seed it with small turf fields the size of basketball courts. Bring in a thousand licensed coaches from Europe, Mexico, and South America, and create one super-squad of 20 kids from that area in every age group. I bet they’d beat the rest of the country within five years. Our national development is too diffuse.</p>
<p>It works in basketball because it’s been drilled into the culture for decades. Our littlest kids learn the game from their friends and big brothers and older kids in the neighborhood, not from coaches. You can’t have it coached into you at a certain point. It has to be baked into who you are. If we are ever going to not suck compared to the rest of the world, we have to bake soccer into the culture of our hungriest kids.</p>
<p>I think it would take 25 years, three mini-generations of kids cycling through, where being the baddest soccer player in the neighborhood is the best thing to be, and where it’s the kids teaching it to each other. That’s when we’ll have a shot at transforming soccer in this country. If we don’t do something radically different, if we fail to recognize this past cycle as the cataclysm it is, we will never make it in this mean, dirty, global game.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>The way American kids play soccer has to change. My neighbor’s 13-year-old son played in <a href="http://www.jogasc.com/">a club</a> with a Brazilian name that uses a Dutch model emphasizing “athletic skill, creativity, expression, and passion over purely technical instruction.” At younger ages, a lot of “practice” is player-run futsal on a basketball court—small-sided games that reward ball possession and control, ingenuity, and improvisation, like the playground basketball Hock mentioned or, more to the point, urban street soccer in every football-first country. My neighbor’s son loved that. Now he’s aged into a more traditional American club, which he finds not as much fun. Pulisic is a unicorn, but unstructured play was <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2713937-the-christian-pulisic-blueprint">central to his development</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Hock:</strong> On <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/hang_up_and_listen/2017/10/jerry_jones_and_jemele_hill_the_baseball_playoffs_and_iceland_s_world_cup.html">Hang Up and Listen this week</a>, Stefan played clips of great “Panenka” penalty kicks. The one from Spain at the 2010 World Cup struck me: “<em>Por Dios, por Espana…</em>” the announcer said. Do we have to get to that point as a soccer nation—where we’re trying to score for God—if we want to compete with Spain, or Brazil, where the players are convinced they were handpicked by God to be on the <em>Sele&ccedil;ao</em>?</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach:</strong> This may be a bit pessimistic, but U.S. soccer might be destined to be like Serbia or Argentina in basketball. A bunch of elite young players will go to European clubs, the way foreign hoops guys come over here for college or the NBA. A few will stick in the top leagues. But, on the whole, these countries rely on a few big domestic clubs to pluck and develop the best basketball talent, in the hopes they’ll have some domestic success and maybe coalesce into a decent national team.</p>
<p>The global soccer market is obviously much bigger, but in basketball it almost always takes a golden generation to compete for top honors internationally—like 2004 Olympic gold medalist Argentina or the crop of Spaniards led by Pau and Marc Gasol, Rudy Fernandez, and Juan Carlos Navarro. You see how hard it is for these countries to stay consistently good in hoops, because they don’t have the expertise and the player pool to create global stars, and at most only a few guys get seasoned against the best every year. And if there’s a “missing” generation, like what we’ve seen from Croatia or Russia in basketball—or the United States in soccer—they struggle at the national level.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>Talking it through like this is making me feel slightly better. But still I mourn. What a shame for Pulisic’s career—the chance to play in a World Cup as a teenager and do something magical that will inspire some 9-year-old boy or girl to juggle for hours in the backyard the way he did. And also for fans, because rooting for the United States in the World Cup, men’s and women’s, has become one of America’s few truly communal sports rituals. I’ll miss that in 2018 (but I’m psyched for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_FIFA_Women%252527s_World_Cup">Women’s World Cup in 2019</a>).</p>
<p><strong>Weinbach: </strong>It is incredibly depressing, to a degree that isn’t possible with our team sports fandom. In the pro and college games, there’s always next season. With no U.S. team in Russia, I worry that American soccer fans, casual and hardcore, will get even <em>more </em>passionate about foreign clubs in the next four years—and they’re already way more into Manchester United and Real Madrid than they are the Galaxy or New York Red Bulls. That’s the trickiest thing. An NBA team doesn’t have to worry about its fans abandoning it for a club team in Italy. MLS teams, and the U.S. men’s national team, do.</p>
<p>But I’m just too invested to give up. I’m incredibly excited about the new <a href="https://lafc.com/">LAFC</a> expansion club in MLS, about some of our younger players, about Pulisic, and about the general trends. But watching the World Cup will be kinda brutal. I’m rooting for Iceland.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M5_WBOCKXs">Duglegur</a>! I loved <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&amp;v=1M5_WBOCKXs">your Vice Sports short</a> with Roger Bennett explaining how Iceland got so good. I’ll be pulling for my ancestral homeland, Greece, to qualify and make another soporific run to the knockout rounds. I’ll root against England and France, just because, and for Egypt because <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/sports/soccer/bob-bradley-an-american-pharaoh-in-egypt.html">Bob Bradley nearly got them there</a> four years ago. Burkina Faso might debut, and I love it when little countries debut. And I’ll be cheering for Lionel Messi to win the whole thing for Argentina, because <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Seil6X3Y1K8">Leo freaking Messi</a>. It’ll be mesmerizing, because it always is. But less intense than it would have been had we not fucked up so colossally.</p>
<p><strong>Hock: </strong>For the United States, this loss, this qualifying period, is our Chicago Fire (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire">actual fire</a>, not the MLS team). Maybe something about what was built had been worth saving, but it’s all lost so let’s take advantage of the opportunity to rebuild. We love soccer now in this country, and we have a healthy league and a lot of excellent younger players. Let’s hope that someone new will take the controls and improve the system for developing world-class talent. The apocalypse has come, and paradise awaits.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> Save us some seats, in the <a href="https://www.theamericanoutlaws.com/">American Outlaws</a> section.</p>Fri, 13 Oct 2017 17:21:07 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/three_u_s_soccer_obsessives_debate_the_future_of_the_men_s_national_team.htmlStefan FatsisJonathan HockJon Weinbach2017-10-13T17:21:07ZThree U.S. soccer obsessives debate the future of the men’s national team.SportsThree U.S. Soccer Obsessives Debate the Future of the Men’s National Team100171013011soccerworld cup 2018Stefan FatsisJonathan HockJon WeinbachSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/three_u_s_soccer_obsessives_debate_the_future_of_the_men_s_national_team.htmlfalsefalsefalseThree U.S. soccer obsessives debate the future of the men’s national team:I believe that we must blow the whole thing up.Ashley Allen/Getty ImagesChristian Pulisic of the United States men's national team reacts to their loss to Trinidad and Tobago on Oct. 10, 2017 in Couva, Trinidad and Tobago.Star-Spangled Bummerhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/the_u_s_missing_the_world_cup_is_a_cataclysmic_failure.html
<p>The final failure of the United States men’s national soccer team’s long, dark World Cup qualifying campaign of the soul is one of vocabulary. <em>Disaster</em> doesn’t seem to cut it. <em>Catastrophe</em>? <em>Calamity</em>? <em>Cataclysm</em>? What do you get when you go past <em>double-plus-un-good</em>?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/dcunited/get-out-the-calculators-argentina-may-miss-world-cup/2017/10/09/d95e6d5e-acb1-11e7-9b93-b97043e57a22_story.html">As Argentina can attest</a>, international soccer is a roller coaster of peaks and valleys. The Friday-to-Tuesday swing for the U.S. was more akin to stepping out of an airplane with one of those Acme parachutes that is actually an anvil. Hope they remembered to <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2738041-lionel-messi-carries-argentina-to-2018-world-cup-with-hat-trick-vs-ecuador">wave at Lionel Messi and Co.</a> on the way down.</p>
<p>Everything that went right in <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/jozy_altidore_and_christian_pulisic_have_the_u_s_on_track_for_the_2018_world.html">the dominant 4–0 win against Panama&nbsp;on Friday</a> came crashing down spectacularly in <a href="http://www.espnfc.com/blog/the-match/60/post/3224208/world-cup-hopes-end-for-woeful-usa-after-shambolic-display-vs-trinidad-and-tobago">Tuesday’s&nbsp;2–1 loss to Trinidad and Tobago</a>. The Pulisic-Altidore-Wood triumvirate that devastated Panama’s backline played like they were stuck in quicksand, with none of the burst or cleverness that marked their interchanges in Orlando on Friday.</p>
<p>Manager Bruce Arena’s decision to play Michael Bradley as the only center midfielder, a position akin to the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke, blew up in his face when Trinidad’s Alvin Jones found a patch of space the size of Tobago with which to line up the 30-yard-bomb that ended up being the game-winner. Everyone was bad, except maybe Clint Dempsey, who Soca Warriors keeper Adrian Foncette seemed determined to prevent from passing Landon Donovan as the team’s all-time scorer.</p>
<p>The convenient thing about a failure this massive is there’s little reason to be stingy with the opprobrium. Is it Arena’s fault? Definitely. His plan&nbsp;Tuesday&nbsp;wasn’t just incorrect but actively wrong. Shall we blame the team’s veteran leaders and its young up-and-comers? Sure, why not. This wasn’t the first game during which nine out of the 11 players went AWOL, and at a certain point you have to start benching players due to their mean performances rather than starting them and hoping you get the best versions. <a href="http://americansoccernow.com/articles/the-missing-years-u-s-soccer-s-development-gap">How about the development pipeline drying up</a>? That's why the team was pretty much all veterans and up-and-comers, with no players who are in their primes to bridge the generations. And what of the referees in Panama, who helped seal the United States’ fate by <a href="https://deadspin.com/u-s-a-out-of-world-cup-on-phantom-goal-1819343176">awarding the first Panamanian goal even though it never crossed the</a> line? Let’s blame them, too.&nbsp;J&uuml;rgen Klinsmann? Of course. Always. He started it. Rafa Marquez? Fox Sports? Trump and Putin? Sure. Whatever. Why not?</p>
<p>This failure is so big, with so many layers, that it will confirm nearly any theory that anyone might possibly have about what’s wrong with U.S. soccer: that Michael Bradley is garbage, that Klinsmann should have been given more time, that Arena should have called <a href="https://www.starsandstripesfc.com/2017/10/9/16446608/usa-1-0-ghana-2017-fifa-u-17-world-cup-just-enough-for-a-win">the U-17 team</a> back from their World Cup in India and started the teens instead. When you’re dealing with a result that shatters everything you thought you knew—the U.S. doesn’t have a divine right to go to every World Cup but the U.S. definitely should go to every World Cup—you can reasonably blame the outcome on anything and everything. <a href="https://twitter.com/LeanderAlphabet/status/917936121757208579">There’s a reason U.S. soccer fans have already taken to comparing Oct. 10, 2017, to Nov. 8, 2016.</a></p>
<p>The short- and long-term ramifications for the sport’s national governing body and for the sport in America as a whole will take time to figure out. Safe to say U.S. Soccer will be looking for a new head coach, perhaps a new federation president, and between six and nine starters. (You can stay, Christian Pulisic.) But those hoping for a total reboot probably shouldn’t hold their breath. And those predicting a massive drop in the number of fans of the sport in this country will likely be left waiting, too. There are few things that make a fan base close ranks faster like a crisis to be weathered. There will be a reckoning, and then the push for Qatar in 2022 will begin in earnest. Weston McKennie’s playing a lot for Schalke. Tyler Adams looks good for the New York Red Bulls. The U-17 team is 2–0 in its group and <a href="https://www.ussoccer.com/us-under17-mens-national-team/latest-roster#tab-1">features more guys named Chris</a> than an <em>Avengers</em> movie.</p>
<p>Next summer is when the other shoe will drop, when the pain and disappointment of not being there will roar&nbsp;back. For those looking for some relief, may I suggest Iceland? <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/hang_up_and_listen/2017/10/jerry_jones_and_jemele_hill_the_baseball_playoffs_and_iceland_s_world_cup.html">That nation of 335,000 just qualified for its first World Cup</a>. This nation of 323 million will be staying home for the first time since 1986. That’s … something worse than a catastrophe.</p>Wed, 11 Oct 2017 03:20:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/the_u_s_missing_the_world_cup_is_a_cataclysmic_failure.htmlEric Betts2017-10-11T03:20:00ZWho’s to blame for the U.S. men’s soccer team’s failure to qualify the World Cup?SportsI’m Going to Need a New Thesaurus to Describe the U.S. Men’s Soccer Team’s Cataclysmic Failure100171010016soccerworld cupworld cup 2018Eric BettsSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/the_u_s_missing_the_world_cup_is_a_cataclysmic_failure.htmlfalsefalsefalseI’m going to need a new thesaurus to describe the U.S. men’s soccer team’s cataclysmic failure:Disaster doesn’t quite do it. Calamity isn’t strong enough either.Ashley Allen/Getty ImagesMichael Bradley and Christian Pulisic of the United States men’s national team react to their loss on Tuesday in Couva, Trinidad and Tobago.These Two Got the USA Threehttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/jozy_altidore_and_christian_pulisic_have_the_u_s_on_track_for_the_2018_world.html
<p>Bruce Arena's big gamble paid off. The coach of the U.S. men's national soccer team started five attackers in Friday’s must-win game against Panama, asking Panama coach Hern&aacute;n Dar&iacute;o G&oacute;mez to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7-tskP0OzI">witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station</a>. That this left the Americans' rickety defense protected by a single shield was a calculated risk, one that paid off in a 4–0 obliteration of Panama that has the U.S. back on track to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. Arena dared his opponent to overload Michael Bradley in front of the U.S. back line, then hit Panama in the gaps that their forward momentum (<a href="https://twitter.com/YanksAreComing/status/916521837579907077">and curiously high defensive line</a>) left behind.</p>
<p>The U.S. had scored only once in the previous 180 minutes of qualifying. On Friday, each of the American front three of Christian Pulisic, Jozy Altidore, and Bobby Wood scored a goal, and all three also either assisted or drew a penalty on the night. The biggest difference between Friday night and the dismal offensive showings against Costa Rica and Honduras in September? Arena started Pulisic high and central instead of on the midfield periphery, making it easier for him to combine with Wood and Altidore. Safe to say the U.S. will do everything it can to keep him there in the future.</p>
<p>Pulisic, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-young-american/">you might have heard,</a> is a generational talent, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need help. (Ask Lionel Messi, <a href="http://www.espnfc.com/fifa-world-cup/4/blog/post/3221837/lionel-messi-and-cristiano-ronaldo-among-big-name-players-who-could-miss-world-cup">whose Argentina team is in serious jeopardy of missing the World Cup</a>.) His opening goal was brilliant—the way he stopped his run on one leg to reach back and corral the ball on the other, then instantly reached top speed again is the definition of &quot;you can't teach that.&quot; But it doesn't happen without Wood, who won Tim Howard's long goal kick in the air, and Altidore, whose one-touch flick bypassed one Panamanian center back and left the other lost in no man's land.</p>
<p>No one benefited more from having Pulisic in the thick of things than Altidore, he of the two goals and one assist on the night. In many ways the 19-year-old Pulisic is Altidore's most natural partner on the roster, certainly the closest thing the U.S. has to his club running mate Giovinco. Pulisic gives Altidore a creative passer and a dynamic runner who can scramble defenses and open up space in the final third so he doesn't have to play the entire game with a center back kicking his ankles. Altidore, in return, gives Pulisic someone to engage defenders and collaborate with on those quick one-twos that give him some freedom from the scything tackles the entire world will be aiming at him for the rest of his national team career. Some of their interplay Friday looked like the soccer equivalent of the pick and roll.</p>
<p>That makes Wood ... Manu Gin&oacute;bili? Shawn Marion? Thunder-era James Harden? He looked essential Friday night and has shown a penchant for clutch goals, but this is the kind of thing he's competing with right now:</p>
<p>This matters, because going forward the U.S. is unlikely to get away with throwing caution so wantonly to the wind. Teams better than Panama will take advantage of an undermanned defense, so how do you bolster that area of the field and keep playing what amounts to three forwards on the other end? A three-man defense? A narrower diamond? If you give Pulisic more defensive responsibility, how will that dull his attacking prowess? Which of Paul Arriola and Darlington Nagbe is more essential to the U.S. game plan? (On Friday night it was Arriola, but will that be true every night?) Are we sure Wood can't play out wide? We're probably not going to outgun Germany, so who sits if one of those three has to sit? (Hint: It won't be Pulisic.) Where does Clint Dempsey fit in all this?</p>
<p>The U.S. is not out of the qualifying woods yet, but a win or draw at last-place Trinidad and Tobago on Tuesday will almost certainly ensure the national team finishes third and goes directly to the World Cup without having to deal with a home-and-home playoff against the fifth-placed Asian team. Arena might get away with pressing his luck and fielding another offensive-minded team in the Caribbean, but if the U.S. qualifies as expected he's eventually going to have to fine-tune the balance on his squad. What he gives up, and what he gets back in return, will determine how far the United States will go next summer in Russia.</p>Sat, 07 Oct 2017 15:14:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/jozy_altidore_and_christian_pulisic_have_the_u_s_on_track_for_the_2018_world.htmlEric Betts2017-10-07T15:14:00ZHow the dynamic duo of Jozy Altidore and Christian Pulisic got the U.S. back on the road to the 2018 World Cup.SportsHow Jozy Altidore and Christian Pulisic Got the U.S. Back on Track for the 2018 World Cup100171007004sportssoccerEric BettsSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/10/jozy_altidore_and_christian_pulisic_have_the_u_s_on_track_for_the_2018_world.htmlfalsefalsefalseHow Jozy Altidore and Christian Pulisic got the U.S. back on the road to the 2018 World Cup:Two great players who go great together.Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images.Christian Pulisic and Jozy Altidore of the U.S. men’s national soccer team at their qualifying match against Panama for the 2018 World Cup, on Friday in Orlando, Florida.Vince Lombardi Would Be Proudhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/vince_lombardi_hated_protests_but_he_fought_for_racial_justice.html
<p>In the days leading up to the Green Bay Packers’ Thursday night victory over the Chicago Bears, the team asked its fans to join the players in a demonstration of unity—locking arms—during the national anthem. The Packers’ call for solidarity came after President Donald Trump urged NFL owners to fire any player who kneeled during the national anthem. In response to the team’s request, one made in part by its star quarterback Aaron Rodgers, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2017/09/28/packlash-fans-enraged-packers-request-join-anthem-demonstration-team-know-want-part-it/">many fans expressed anger</a> over what they perceived as the Packers’ disrespect for the flag, the anthem, and the military—even though black players, taking a cue from <a href="https://slate.com/sports/2017/08/colin-kaepernicks-protest-cost-him-his-job-but-started-a-movement.html">Colin Kaepernick</a>, have made clear that they are kneeling in protest against police brutality and racism.</p>
<p>Yet critics maintain that the Packers have betrayed not only the country but also the <em>pater familias</em> of football: legendary Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi. Venting their displeasure with the Packers’ demonstration on social media, self-proclaimed super patriots <a href="https://twitter.com/rrizzolo167/status/913499211815178241">lamented</a> that Lombardi must be rolling in his grave in shame that his Packers refused to honor the flag. (“The Star-Spangled Banner” has only been played regularly at sporting events since World War II.) Country music singer Charlie Daniels, who has said he is boycotting the NFL due to the anthem protests, <a href="https://twitter.com/charliedaniels/status/913182016543318017">tweeted</a>, “Wonder how Vince Lombardi would have reacted to his players kneeling during the anthem.”</p>
<p>Though not universal, the fan backlash against the Packers raises more questions about Lombardi’s legacy: Why has he become a prominent symbol of law and order in the age of Trump? And why do so many Americans hold such an unwavering belief in the patriotic significance of football? Perhaps it’s because President Trump himself has invoked the memory of Lombardi as the kind of leader he admires: a winner whose unquestioned authority made him seem all the more heroic to his supporters. (As he said to the <em>Washington Post</em> about once <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/04/donald-trump-just-explained-his-vision-for-the-country-whoa-boy/?tid=a_inl&amp;utm_term=.9d479a067953">seeing Lombardi scream</a> at a player, “I realized the only way Vince Lombardi got away with that was because he won.”) Perhaps for some fans, the demonstrations by black athletes and their white teammates shatter the notion that football—and the country itself—are unscathed by racism. Or perhaps, as Lombardi biographer David Maraniss <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0684870185/?tag=slatmaga-20">has suggested</a>, Americans continue to look to “St. Vincent,” a coach who succeeded in an age of protest and social unrest, because he reminds them of leadership that seems “irretrievably lost,” a man of action who believed in God, country, and family.</p>
<p>In the late 1960s, no football coach commanded more respect than Lombardi, who had led the Packers to five NFL championships. Before 1967, Lombardi’s last year as coach of the Packers, most of his speeches focused on football as a metaphor for life: the importance of character, discipline, sacrifice, and mental toughness. He rarely spoke about specific political controversies or foreign policy, even as the American presence in Vietnam was rising. Yet as the nation became increasingly roiled by conflicts over race, war, and campus unrest, Lombardi became more concerned about the country’s direction. He was especially worried about the growing rebellion among America’s youth and their lack of respect for authority.</p>
<p>In response to what he saw as the problems of society, Lombardi developed “the speech,” an address that spoke to the frustration he shared with Middle America about “a complete breakdown of law and order and the moral code.” Lombardi first delivered his new speech on Feb. 8, 1967, in New York City at the American Management Association. Though he was a lifelong Democrat, his speech seemed to suggest that he was turning to the right. Studying the world around him, the demonstrations by the New Left, the counterculture, and antiwar activists, Lombardi feared that “everything has been done to strengthen the rights of the individual and at the same time weaken the rights of the church, weaken the rights of the state, and weaken the rights of all authority.” Perhaps, he added, “we have too much freedom.”</p>
<p>For Lombardi, a man who cherished the sanctity of institutions, excessive individualism and the disruptive forces of protest threatened his vision for a civil society. He was not the only one. Later that fall, in an <a href="http://college.cengage.com/history/ayers_primary_sources/nixon_1967.htm">article published</a> in <em>Reader’s Digest</em>, Richard Nixon asked the prevailing question weighing on the minds of many: “What Has Happened to America?” Though Nixon would not start using the term “silent majority” until 1969 to define those who “do not demonstrate, who do not picket or protest loudly,” his <em>Digest</em> article clearly identified the symptoms of “national disorder—the decline in respect for public authority and the rule of law in America.” He pointed to the summer race riots in inner cities “as the most visible” cause. The signs of America’s contempt for authority could be found everywhere: “in the public attitude toward police, in the mounting traffic in illicit drugs, in the volume of teenage arrests, in campus disorders and the growth of white collar crime.” The Silent Majority had become exasperated with protesters “disrupting parades, invading government offices, burning draft cards, blocking troop trains or desecrating the American flag.” Aside from the draft cards, it’s a list of complaints one might not be surprised to hear today.</p>
<p>In the emerging Nixon’s America, Lombardi became a voice for traditional values and patriotism, the very principles that he believed were under attack. In 1967, he welcomed a group of Green Bay women who organized “Pride in Patriotism Day” at Lambeau Field, an event organized as a “flag-waving answer to young antiwar demonstrators and draft card burners.” The women provided more than 50,000 flags to fans that day, covering the entire stadium with the stars and stripes. Before kickoff a college choir sang, “This Is My Country” and “God Bless America.” This was not simply patriotism. It was politics. During the 1960s, the Packers and the NFL explicitly embraced the government’s position in Vietnam, turning stadiums into arenas for promoting U.S. foreign policy. It was during the late 1960s that NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, a political conservative, mandated that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/09/26/national-anthem-protests-arent-politicizing-the-nfl-it-was-already-political/?utm_term=.1031e6a6c40d">all players stand</a> at attention during the anthem. After watching the partisan spectacle on national television, he sent Lombardi a telegram that simply said, “Wonderful.”</p>
<p>Yet despite his clear sense of what was going wrong, Lombardi offered only vague solutions for the country’s problems. He admitted that he knew little about the various protests movements, but in his mind they all represented a threat against order and a preference for factionalism over unity. In an age of complex social problems, his message of respecting authority and the rule of law offered appealing relief for those yearning for simplicity. What the country needed most, he argued, was better leadership. And by 1968, he had become so popular on the speaker’s circuit that both political parties considered him leadership material, potentially a vice-presidential candidate.</p>
<p>There were few men whom Richard Nixon respected more than Lombardi. As a political candidate and later as president, Nixon wanted to capitalize on football’s popularity to build a coalition with Middle America, fusing sports and politics. Throughout his political career, he appeared at games, met with fans, coaches, and players, and presented himself as an expert on the sport. He believed that pro football fans made up the Silent Majority and that the game’s most successful coach could bring the country together—and possibly win him votes. But when his adviser John Mitchell learned that Lombardi was a Kennedy man, progressive on civil rights and gun control, Nixon realized that he had misjudged him.</p>
<p>Yet Lombardi’s politics never fit neatly into a single ideological box. A man of contradictions, he embodied a mixture of conservative and liberal impulses. Critics viewed him as an emblem of authoritarianism, conformity, and narrow thinking. In an <a href="http://classic.esquire.com/the-toughest-man-in-pro-football/"><em>Esquire </em>profile</a>, Leonard Shecter painted him as an egotistical tyrant. But for all his flaws, Lombardi was also deeply compassionate, thoroughly committed to improving society. He may have embraced a certain idealized notion of social order, but it was not one that valorized the status quo of racial inequality against black Americans.</p>
<p>Lombardi deplored prejudice of any kind. As an American of Italian descent and a devoted Catholic who had grown up in Brooklyn, New York, hearing all sorts of demeaning slurs, Lombardi would not tolerate bigotry on his team. In 1959, during his first season as head coach of the Packers, he lectured the team on intolerance. “If I ever hear <em>nigger</em> or <em>dago</em> or <em>kike</em> or anything like that around here, regardless of who you are, you’re through with me,” he said. “You can’t play for me if you have any kind of prejudice.” Recognizing that the black players on his team experienced discrimination in Green Bay, an overwhelmingly white town, Lombardi made it known among local taverns, restaurants, and landlords that if his players were not treated equally that there would be hell to pay.</p>
<p>Lombardi viewed his team as a family, which made him the father. Stern though he was, he loved his players, black or white. And he made sure to protect them. Traveling through the Jim Crow South in 1960 for exhibition games, the integrated Packers were denied service at hotels, forcing the black players to stay at separate establishments. Lombardi vowed that he would never again allow the black men on his team to experience such humiliation. In the future, he declared, every Packer would stay together. It was a kind of political protest, one that did not garner headlines but certainly didn’t go unnoticed among his players. Racism, he reminded them, would not divide the team.</p>
<p>His progressive racial views were shaped not only by his experience as an Italian American, but also by what he experienced firsthand in the South. According to Maraniss, when the team visited Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for a game against lily-white Washington, Lombardi, bronzed from the summer sun, was refused service in a local diner because the hostess thought he was a black man. Although he could never know what it meant to be black in a segregated country, he at least had a window into the daily degradations black Americans encountered.</p>
<p>His greatest Packer teams depended on full integration. When he came to Green Bay as an assistant coach from the New York Giants, the Packers had only one black player: Nate Borden. Lombardi understood that he could not construct a championship team by ignoring black athletes. As head coach and general manager, he drafted and recruited some of the greatest black players in the league. By 1967, the Packers fielded a squad with 13 black athletes, including All-Pros Willie Davis, Willie Wood, Dave Robinson, Herb Adderley, and Bob Jeter.</p>
<p>But Lombardi did not simply play black athletes. He treated them the same as his white players, even when disciplining them. “It never enters my mind that I’m being chewed out because I’m a Negro,” Dave Robinson said. “The important thing is everybody gets equal treatment.” Traditionally, head coaches assigned hotel rooms based on race. Lombardi, however, made sure that room assignments were not made on the basis of skin color. In 1967, Harry Edwards reported, the Packers were the only NFL team with such a policy.</p>
<p>Looking back, Vince Lombardi’s treatment of black players helped forge the Packers’ reputation as the most democratic team in the NFL. Although we can’t be certain how he would respond to players kneeling during the anthem, what we do know is that if something mattered to his players then it mattered to him too. An advocate for social justice, Lombardi listened to his men, believing that their voices needed to be heard when it came to racial equality. For Lombardi recognized the humanity of every man on his team. “If you’re black or white, you’re part of the family,” he explained in 1968. “We respect every man’s dignity black or white.”</p>
<p>Regardless of a player’s race, background, or political views, he said, a team stood as one. His message resonated on Thursday night when Aaron Rodgers and his teammates locked arms in a demonstration of “love over hate and unity over division.” Football, Lombardi believed, had the power to enlighten, to bring together black men and white men. “If you’re going to play together as a team,” he said, “you’ve got to care for one another. You’ve got to love each other.”</p>
<p>Love over hate. That was Vince Lombardi.</p>Sat, 30 Sep 2017 19:23:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/vince_lombardi_hated_protests_but_he_fought_for_racial_justice.htmlJohnny Smith2017-09-30T19:23:00ZThe legendary Green Bay Packers coach disliked protests, but he was a champion for racial justice.SportsVince Lombardi May Have Hated Protests, but He Was a Champion for Racial Justice100170930003nflJohnny SmithSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/vince_lombardi_hated_protests_but_he_fought_for_racial_justice.htmlfalsefalsefalseVince Lombardi hated protests, but he fought for racial justice.“You can’t play for me if you have any kind of prejudice.”Focus on Sport/Getty Images; Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesVince Lombardi; the Packers during the national anthem on Thursday night.Black Athletes Are Only Loved When They Are Harmlesshttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/black_athletes_like_ali_and_kaepernick_are_loved_when_harmless.html
<p><strong><em>Want to listen to this article out loud? Hear it on </em></strong><a href="http://slate.com/voice?utm_medium=link&amp;utm_campaign=slate_voice&amp;utm_content=&amp;utm_source=article"><strong><em>Slate Voice</em></strong></a><strong><em>.</em></strong></p>
<p>The writer Stanley Crouch has a great line about Muhammad Ali. When Ali came to fame in the 1960s, he was a grizzly bear, fierce and uncontrollable, Crouch told Ishmael Reed in an interview.&nbsp;In the second act of his career, Ali was a circus bear, still dangerous but also entertaining. In his last act, when he no longer seemed threatening, Ali was a teddy bear, soft and comforting and silent.</p>
<p>It’s Ali the grizzly bear who is frequently invoked as the country debates whether athletes like Colin Kaepernick should protest police violence on a national stage. But in hailing Ali for carving the path for those like Kaepernick, we often forget the high price the boxer paid for his political views. We forget that Ali had to be declawed to be beloved.</p>
<p>When Cassius Clay joined the Nation of Islam and dropped what he considered his slave name to become Muhammad Ali, he was attacked by politicians and the media. “I pity Clay and abhor what he represents,” wrote Jimmy Cannon. Even Martin Luther King Jr. said Ali “should spend more time proving his boxing skill and do less talking.”</p>
<p>When he refused to fight in the U.S. military in Vietnam, he was convicted of draft evasion and sentenced to five years in prison. He remained free while appealing the conviction, but boxing officials stripped him of the heavyweight championship and his license to box. He was called a coward, a traitor, a dupe, and an uppity N-word.</p>
<p>During all this, Ali stood almost completely alone.</p>
<p>In 1967, a group of America's top black athletes including Jim Brown and Bill Russell met with Ali in Cleveland. Legend has it they gathered to show support for Ali. But I found evidence to the contrary in researching my <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0544435249/?tag=slatmaga-20">Ali biography</a>. Those other black athletes were really gathered in an attempt to convince Ali to make a deal with the government and get back to boxing, having been offered a financial incentive by one of Ali’s white boxing promoters to do so. Only when Ali refused, saying he’d die before compromising, did the athletes issue a statement of support for their peer.</p>
<p>Ali lost three-and-a-half prime years and millions of dollars. When the Supreme Court overturned his conviction, he said he wouldn’t sue for damages. He’d done what he thought was right, Ali said, and the government lawyers did what they thought was right. Everyone was entitled to his own view.</p>
<p>Ali began to win public favor when he accepted his conviction and moved on without griping. He gained more support when he returned to the ring, clearly diminished as a fighter, and lost in a brilliant and brutal bout with Joe Frazier in 1971.</p>
<p>He fought Frazier a second time and won. He regained his championship. He stopped talking quite so much about race and politics. And then he began to get old. His voice slowed. He gained weight. He lost more fights. He retired. He got sick. He lit the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996, his hands shaking from Parkinson’s, letting the world see him in all his imperfection, which took another kind of courage.</p>
<p>It’s troubling, though, that Ali became more lovable as he became more harmless. It’s backward. When we reflect on Ali’s life, we should remember him most for the occasions in which he most infuriated us. That’s when he was bravest, and that’s when he showed us what kind of country we could be if we were willing to fight.</p>
<p>Athletes who have spoken out for change, like Kaepernick and <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/01/531023588/hate-is-living-every-day-lebron-james-says-after-racist-graffiti-incident">LeBron James</a>, should be admired, not mocked, for their courage. The people seeking to shut them up are the same sort of people who refused to recognize Muhammad Ali’s right to cut his symbolic ties to slavery by changing his name.</p>
<p>Some say Kaepernick would be playing in the NFL today if he were a better quarterback, but history and human nature suggests that’s not true. Muhammad Ali was the greatest boxer in the world, and he was still pilloried by the public, stripped of his title, and exiled. The racist attacks on these men come from a source that doesn’t care how talented or successful a black athlete is.</p>
<p>If we expect sports heroes to be bold and brave on the field but passive and compliant off it, that’s our problem, not theirs.</p>Tue, 26 Sep 2017 23:07:12 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/black_athletes_like_ali_and_kaepernick_are_loved_when_harmless.htmlJonathan Eig2017-09-26T23:07:12ZWhat happened to Muhammad Ali will happen to Colin Kaepernick and others like him.SportsBlack Athletes Are Only Loved When They Are Harmless100170926019muhammad aliJonathan EigSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/black_athletes_like_ali_and_kaepernick_are_loved_when_harmless.htmlfalsefalsefalseBlack athletes are only loved when they are harmless:Racism doesn’t care about talent.Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images, Bettmann / Contributor via Getty ImagesFootball players kneeling during hte national anthem is part of a tradition of athlete protest that also included Muhammad Ali, right—before he was beloved.The NFL Protests Are About a Lack of Empathyhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/hang_up_and_listen_on_the_lack_of_empathy_fueling_the_nfl_protests.html
<p><em>On Friday night in Alabama, President Donald Trump commented on the protests for racial justice that took off last year after </em><a href="https://slate.com/sports/2017/08/colin-kaepernicks-protest-cost-him-his-job-but-started-a-movement.html"><em>Colin Kaepernick sat during the anthem</em></a><em>. Trump labeled the NFL players who had protested—almost all of them black—“sons of bitches.” Over the weekend, more than 150 NFL players, alongside coaches, owners, and players in other sports, protested.&nbsp;On <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/hang_up_and_listen/2017/09/the_nfl_protests_kevin_durant_and_atlanta_united_fc_on_hang_up_and_listen.html">Monday’s episode of Hang Up and Listen</a>, Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Marcus Thompson discussed the demonstrations. A transcript, which has been edited for clarity, is below.</em></p>
<p><strong>Stefan Fatsis:</strong> Trump managed to turn kneeling into a protest against him. Did the events of this weekend do more?</p>
<p><strong>Marcus Thompson: </strong>I think they did. If the NFL owners who directly supported the campaign of Donald Trump are like, <em>Hold on dude, chill</em>, and if Roger Goodell has to send a statement—and we all know Roger Goodell is not trying to be the responsible one—then you know we have something here. You know something big has happened when Ray Lewis, who was ripping the whole thing, now is on his knees praying.</p>
<p>It’s amazing that the president was able to do this, and in a sense it’s almost commendable that he could be so derogatory as to turn his former friends against him. It’s just crazy.</p>
<p><strong>Josh Levin: </strong>The thing that was really notable about Sunday is that Colin Kaepernick wasn’t there. Jelani Cobb of the <em>New Yorker</em> was <a href="https://twitter.com/jelani9/status/912124923568631808">saying on Twitter</a> that this is the ending of the Colin Kaepernick movie—where the swelling music comes in and his protest takes over the whole NFL and the whole country.</p>
<p>But there’s something a little bit off that the folks who blackballed Kaepernick are now being celebrated as heroes. Trump has made it so that in order to show our disgust with him, we need to support this league that has not covered itself in glory with respect to Kaepernick and these protests and a whole lot of other issues.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> I feel like we’re giving these guys cover for their previous behaviors. Despite all of these statements from almost every NFL team—some of them great, some of them progressive, some of them thoughtful, some ass-covering—Kaepernick is still out of work. This guy was blackballed.</p>
<p><strong>Thompson: </strong>It’s really not about doing the right thing. It’s not even about the conversation Kaepernick was trying to start. The hypocrisy in all of it is that they just want to sell tickets. Meanwhile, there’s no Kaepernick, and now you have even more distraction.</p>
<p><strong>Levin:</strong> The NFL is not an organization that you would ever consider progressive. The fact that the owners and the commissioner’s office came out in support of players this strongly after Trump attacked them—doesn’t that show just how amazingly awful and craven the ESPN response was <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/09/the_real_political_correctness_is_what_put_trump_in_the_white_house.html">after Jemele Hill got attacked</a>? ESPN couldn’t even say, <em>We don’t necessarily support what she said, but we support her right to say it</em>. <em>And there is no way in hell that the president is going to tell us who we can employ. </em>The fact that that statement didn’t come from [ESPN President] John Skipper now just looks even worse to me.</p>
<p>In the Alabama rally, Trump also said that football isn’t violent enough anymore—that basically the players are all wimps and it’s the wussification of America. That statement gave the game away for me. Trump doesn’t care about any of the stuff that he’s saying—things that he feels like white people in the middle of the country who feel like football players are rich and they’re complaining and they’re millionaires and also they don’t even give each other brain damage anymore care about. This has very little to do with his beliefs about patriotism and the flag, and it’s just all about telling the people who voted for him what they want to hear.</p>
<p><strong>Thompson:</strong> I just don’t understand why nobody can get this dude to shut up.</p>
<p><strong>Levin:</strong> [Chief of staff] John Kelly is getting the White House on lock.</p>
<p><strong>Thompson:</strong> He’s so self-destructive. We’re just talking about football; we’re just talking about NFL players. Somebody needs to get him to chill in foreign relations, and they can’t do it. We’re about to be in a nuclear war because this dude can’t control his mouth. It is insane that the president is like my uncle who drinks a little too much and probably has an old heroin addiction. He and my uncle are the same.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> He’s Donny from Queens calling into <a href="http://newyork.cbslocal.com/station/wfan/">WFAN</a>. He’s the dipshit at the end of the bar.</p>
<p>But there is a history with the NFL and all of those decades when banks and cities and media and elected officials were enabling Trump’s businesses and his personal bullshit. Only the NFL told him to fuck off, and the first time it did it was in the 1980s when he owned the New Jersey Generals in the USFL. Trump pushed the USFL to move to a fall schedule to pressure the NFL effectively to give him a franchise and then sued the NFL on antitrust grounds and ran the USFL under. More recently, he tried to buy the Buffalo Bills and was laughed out of the room. So if the NFL were taking some sort of moral high ground by attacking Donald Trump, it certainly was in a position to do so given its past relationship.</p>
<p><strong>Thompson:</strong> Meanwhile they also gave <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/25/news/companies/trump-nfl-owners-donations/index.html">several million</a> to his campaign? He’s a piece to the right. He’s a cog.</p>
<p>Even though they probably kowtow in this PR situation, the NFL knows it’s bigger than the president. People are going to ride with the NFL; it’s the arrogance of the NFL. They’re showing that like even we will contradict ourselves and ride with players. That’s the part that’s so amazing. Trump has so low temperance that he’s pissing off all his friends, his guys who have to be like, <em>Man, dude, you’re killing me. I have to put out a statement against you, even though you’re my guy, and I’m giving you money.</em> That’s how wild he is.</p>
<p><strong>Levin:</strong> [Former Bills coach] Rex Ryan came up particularly badly in this whole episode. Ryan goes on the ESPN pregame show—Ryan, who introduced Trump at a rally and owned up to that fact in his little soliloquy—and now says, <em>I’m pissed off</em>.<em> I can’t believe Trump called players sons of bitches</em>. Well, I guess it was cool when Trump calls Mexicans coming across the border “rapists,” that was fine, but if you call NFL players “sons of bitches,” that crosses your red line, Rex Ryan? Good for owners or commentators for getting religion at this point, I guess?</p>
<p>But people need to have empathy. People need to understand that when the most powerful guy in the world or a candidate for the presidency is saying really awful stuff about people who are voiceless or who are less powerful, maybe he could say that about somebody that you know or that you care about at some point. Maybe you shouldn’t empower somebody who makes statements like that. That seems pretty obvious to me, you idiot, Rex Ryan.</p>
<p><strong>Thompson:</strong> All of this is about lack of empathy. The fact that it’s being dubbed an “anthem cause” or “anthem protest” shows that people don’t care about what the actual cause is.</p>
<p>The bottom line is—and I talked with Kaepernick plenty times about this—he’s hurting about what he’s seeing. It’s about this sorrow you see as someone who is successful, and you feel bad because you’re in this spot, and people are hurting, and it hurts you. I know the feeling: I went to college, and my family back at home was struggling, and people were hungry, and I’m in college chilling. You feel bad, right? So he’s hurting. And the answer is <em>Dude, could you please stand for the anthem?</em> Nobody’s acknowledging the fact that Malcolm Jenkins and Michael Bennett are hurting. They’re seeing what’s happening, and all people care about is how they lashed out, so to speak. And that’s one of the parts that really gets me about the Tom Bradys and the Drew Breeses: You’re big on this team, but your teammates over there are hurting. You should probably go do something about it. That’s what Mark Canha from the A’s saw when catcher Bruce Maxwell wanted to kneel, and he’s like, <em>All I know is he was talking to us, and he was get choked up, and I saw that guy needed a brother today. </em>So he <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/athletics/article/A-s-Bruce-Maxwell-first-MLB-player-to-kneel-for-12223798.php">puts his hand on his shoulder</a>. Empathy is at the core of it, and we see how much it’s lacking.</p>
<p><strong>Levin:</strong> For all the criticism of <em>we don’t even know what they’re protesting, </em>Malcolm Jenkins, along with Anquan Boldin, <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/09/05/themmqb-meaning-behind-anthem-protests-malcolm-jenkins-anquan-boldin-nfl-racial-inequality">made a video for <em>Sports Illustrated</em></a> and has talked relentlessly about the very specific issues around criminal justice reform. He has supported specific legislation and policies around what he wants to see around policing, particularly with people of color and mass incarceration. Michael Bennett has talked about an extremely specific set of issues <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/the_las_vegas_police_are_smearing_michael_bennett.html">relating to what happened to him personally in Las Vegas.</a> This core set of players was drilling down and making this protest about something specific. Then Trump comes in, and now it’s about the players versus Trump, the players versus the anthem, and the layers versus the flag. It becomes less specific of a cause.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> It falls back on the NFL to take further action. A couple of days before all of this went down, a group of current and former NFL players, including Jenkins and Boldin, wrote a <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/memo-nfl-players-ask-roger-goodell-support-racial-equality-campaign-031110505.html">10-page memo to Goodell</a> asking for league support and cooperation in a campaign for racial equality and criminal justice reform. There’s this document that’s sitting on either Goodell’s desk or some PR guy’s desk at the NFL with specific requests on how the league can help make this not about disrespecting the flag or disrespecting the military or respecting the anthem but can take concrete steps to make its fans aware of why these African American young men feel hurt and feel pain and want progress to occur, want change to occur. Here’s a specific set of things that you, the NFL, can now do.</p>
<p><strong>Levin: </strong>One one side, the president of the United States retweets some rando on Twitter, <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/trump-ignorantly-uses-pat-tillman-to-shame-protesters.html">writes something completely ignorant about Pat Tillman</a> and the flag, not understanding at all who Tillman was and what he stood for. On the other side, you have people like Malcolm Jenkins, who is an amazing football player and an incredibly smart guy but is not someone who has the kind of background or r&eacute;sum&eacute; that you would expect to stand up in terms of knowledge to the president of the United States. Just think about how remarkable this moment is in American history.</p>
<p><strong>Thompson:</strong> This is the new wave. They’re so willing to cash in their fame and to trade in whatever influence they have. If you get enough of them on the same topic, it’s going to be hard to overlook. And I think that’s what we’re seeing. Malcolm Jenkins, Anquan Boldin—they’re great players. They’re not even the superstars. I think that <a href="https://twitter.com/kingjames/status/911610455877021697">LeBron tweet</a> was retweeted 600,000 times—</p>
<p><strong>Levin:</strong> “U bum.”</p>
<p>Marcus, you <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1501147838/?tag=slatmaga-20">wrote a book about Steph Curry</a>, and he’s not somebody that you think of as a guy who wants to make really provocative and out-there political statements. This is thrust upon him around the Warriors not wanting to visit the White House. What do you make of Steph kind of being put into this maelstrom?</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis: </strong>Here’s what Steph said: “By acting and not going, hopefully that will inspire some change when it comes to what we tolerate in this country and what is accepted and what we turn a blind eye toward. It’s not just the act of not going there. There are things you have to do on the back end to actually push that message into motion.” That’s not something that we’ve heard from Steph Curry before. He’s not the most political guy.</p>
<p><strong>Thompson:</strong> He’s not. Steph prefers the Malcolm Jenkins roll, where you sneak off and you’re doing tangible things to effect change but not in the forefront. That’s Steph’s whole thing: I don’t want to be in the discussion, I don’t want to be out front. I want to be in the back, making things happen. But because of who he is, because somebody wrote a dope book on him and he’s winning championships and all that, now he’s got to say something. He’s got to stand up. And I think what we’ve seen with this Trump situation is that he’s comfortable doing it now.</p>
<p>The crazy part was the Warriors gave him an out. They were going with the whole “we’re going to meet and talk about it, we’re going to give it the proper dialogue and discuss.” [Warriors GM] Bob Myers was intent on trying to figure out a way to make it happen. Steph’s like, <em>Yeah, that’s the company line, but I just don’t want to go. </em>He’s a symbol of how these athletes are starting to say<em>, We may not be Muhammad Ali, per se, but it’s a whole lot of us who realize we got some clout, and we could use it</em>.</p>
<p>I think his friendship with Barack Obama helped him, because he’s like, <em>I could call the president and go play golf, so I really don’t have to worry about this dude at all</em>. I’ve never seen him this comfortable being a part of a controversy. All of a sudden, the bullets slow down, and he realized that he was Neo. It was that moment for him.</p>
<p><strong>Levin: </strong>Even for a guy like Steph—this gets to the whole stick-to-sports thing—is that Trump has made it so that making no statement is a political statement. Going to the White House is not a neutral move at this point. I’m sorry, Pittsburgh Penguins. There is nothing that Steph could do to avoid this moment, and I think he handled it well and gracefully.</p>
<p>Let’s also note that L.A. Sparks stayed in the locker room in the WNBA finals during the National Anthem.</p>
<p><strong>Thompson:</strong> The WNBA have always been in the forefront of this, especially as a collective. They have a unified front on that end. Beginning way back, with “I can’t breathe,” they’ve been on top of it, and they definitely should get some credit for that.</p>
<p><strong>Fatsis:</strong> They made a league change its policies. They wore T-shirts during pregame and were fined, talked to the league, and the league turned around and said,<em> We’re not going to punish you for silent quiet protest.</em></p>Tue, 26 Sep 2017 00:28:51 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/hang_up_and_listen_on_the_lack_of_empathy_fueling_the_nfl_protests.htmlStefan FatsisJosh LevinMarcus Thompson2017-09-26T00:28:51ZPlayers want people to understand that, however Trump spins things, the protests aren’t an “anthem cause.”SportsThe NFL Protests Are About a Lack of Empathy100170925016nfldonald trumpsportsStefan FatsisJosh LevinMarcus ThompsonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/hang_up_and_listen_on_the_lack_of_empathy_fueling_the_nfl_protests.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe NFL protests are about a lack of empathy:Players are trying to get people to understand the protests aren’t an “anthem cause.”Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesMembers of the Colts kneel prior to the start of their game on Sunday in Indianapolis.The Smearing of Michael Bennetthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/the_las_vegas_police_are_smearing_michael_bennett.html
<p>Earlier this month, NFL star Michael Bennett <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/06/vegas_police_allegedly_threatened_to_kill_nfl_s_michael_bennett.html">publicly accused</a> the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department of racial profiling and excessive use of force. “I felt helpless as I lay there on the ground handcuffed facing the real-life threat of being killed,” the Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman wrote, describing his arrest by Vegas police last month. “All I could think of was ‘I’m going to die for no other reason than I am black and my skin color is somehow a threat.’ ”</p>
<p>Bennett, who is <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/16/sport/seahawks-michael-bennett-not-standing-for-national-anthem/index.html">sitting out the national anthem</a> this season to protest racial inequality, drew support from <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/statement-of-solidarity-with-michael-bennett/">a wide array of civil rights leaders and athletes</a> (among them Colin Kaepernick) after going public with his allegation of police brutality. The LVMPD and the Las Vegas police union, meanwhile, have either implied or said outright that he’s a liar, a publicity hound, and a potential criminal.</p>
<p>The statements and actions of the Vegas police department and police union in the aftermath of Bennett’s accusation have been uniformly shameful. The LVMPD has praised itself for its transparency while refusing to answer reporters’ questions while the union noted Bennett’s “disrespect for our American Flag, and everything it symbolizes” and <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/09/07/michael-bennett-las-vegas-police-union-nfl-investigation">demanded the NFL investigate him</a> for his “obvious false allegations against our officers”—this despite the police department not having completed its investigation into the incident. (The NFL has said it will not investigate Bennett’s behavior, and Commissioner Roger Goodell said he “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2017/09/06/michael-bennett-police-roger-goodell-seattle-seahawks/640445001/">represents the best of the NFL</a>.”)</p>
<p>In an interview <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/nfl-star-michael-bennett-terrified-encounter-police/story?id=49806200">broadcast on ABC’s <em>Nightline</em> on Thursday</a>, Bennett’s lawyer, John Burris, said, &quot;Unless things change dramatically, I will file a federal civil lawsuit alleging that [Michael Bennett’s] Fourth Amendment rights were violated.” In that interview, Burris said Bennett was detained illegally and that the police used excessive force “by placing the firearm, a gun, at the base of his head.”</p>
<p>The basic facts of the case are not really in dispute. In the hours after last month’s boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, police officers swept through the Cromwell Hotel &amp; Casino after getting reports of an active shooter. Bodycam footage released by the department shows cops shouting “everybody out,” and instructing crowds to “move it!” As Bennett fled with the rest of the crowd amid this chaos, an officer shouted, “There’s one running! There’s one running!” Police gave chase and one officer wondered aloud, in apparent reference to Bennett, “Did he have a gun?” Bennett did not have a gun, and there was in fact no active shooter.</p>
<p>This is where accounts begin to diverge. Bennett says an officer put a gun to his head and said, “I will blow your fucking head off if you move.” He also claims that another officer later jammed his knee into the football player’s back while he was on the ground submitting to the arrest.</p>
<p>Las Vegas police have not offered an account of what happened in these moments. The department has said it is reviewing 126 separate videos of the incident and has opened a full investigation. On the same day Vegas PD announced the existence of that investigation, though, LVMPD Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said at a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki33OelU1YM">press conference</a> that he’d already reached a conclusion: “I can tell you as I stand here today, I see no evidence … that race played any role in this incident.”</p>
<p>Given that the Las Vegas police appear to have decided in advance what the evidence will and won’t show, there’s little reason to have confidence in their “investigation.” Another reason to be pessimistic about the department’s internal inquiry: Although Nevada law mandates that police officers activate their bodycams when they’re pursuing a suspect, the officer who arrested Bennett did not do so. Steve Grammas, the president of the Las Vegas police union, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2017/09/08/missing-michael-bennett-altercation-activated-body-cameras/646714001/">told <em>USA Today</em></a> that the camera may not have been activated because of “malfunctions where wires come loose.” When I asked the LVMPD why the officer didn’t turn on his camera, the department declined to respond.</p>
<p>The Vegas police showed another officer’s bodycam footage in its press conference, and that video backs Bennett’s version of events. That footage shows the arrest for just one second before the officer with the camera turns away. In that one second, though, you can see the arresting officer holding a gunlike object, which he appears to aim at the back of Bennett’s head. Bennett’s attorney says the object was clearly a gun, and it looks like a gun to me. You can judge the footage for yourself by fast-forwarding to the 12:35 mark of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki33OelU1YM">this video</a>.</p>
<p>“If the investigation reveals that any policies or training were violated, those officers will be held accountable,” McMahill said during the press conference. He then narrated the video as if it showed cops following standard procedure. It’s not clear that they did.</p>
<p>Bennett’s lawyer has sought any contemporaneous police reports that might indicate why the LVMPD singled out Bennett and justify its display of deadly force. “We want to know, what facts do you have at the time that supported your stop and detaining this person?” he told me. “Was he unlawfully detained, and [was] the use of deadly force or the displaying of deadly force reasonable under the circumstance?” Former Dallas police chief David Brown told <em>Nightline</em> that he did not believe aiming a gun at Bennett’s head would’ve been reasonable. “There is never ever an appropriate time or appropriate action by an officer pointing a gun at the head of a person,” he said.</p>
<p>The LVMPD <a href="https://www.lvmpd.com/en-us/InternalOversightConstitutionalPolicing/Documents/GO-008-15_UseofForce.pdf">policy</a> on reasonable force and “tactical considerations” when using handguns reads, in part:</p>
<blockquote>
An officer’s decision to draw or exhibit a firearm should be based on the tactical situation at hand and the officer’s reasonable belief there is a substantial risk that the situation will escalate to the point where deadly force may be justified. Unnecessarily drawing or exhibiting a firearm may limit an officer’s alternatives in controlling a situation, create unnecessary anxiety on the part of citizens, and result in an unwarranted or accidental discharge of the firearm.
</blockquote>
<p>The LVMPD declined to respond when asked whether it would violate department policy to point a gun at the head of a surrendering suspect who is on the ground with his hands behind his back.</p>
<p>In the department’s press conference, McMahill consistently blamed Bennett for how the incident played out. “Due to Bennett’s actions and the information officers had at the time, [officers] believed Bennett may have been involved in the shooting and they gave chase,” he said.</p>
<p>As of last week, the Vegas police department was still treating Bennett as a suspect, though it would not say what he was suspected of doing. “It’s fair to say the LVMPD is continuing to investigate whether Mr. Bennett was involved in the altercation at the hotel casino prior to his detention on Las Vegas Boulevard,” Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesperson Larry Hadfield told <em>USA Today</em> last week. When I asked him which altercation he was referring to, Hadfield declined to comment on the record.</p>
<p>To Bennett’s defenders and his lawyer, this looks like a smear campaign, one meant to discredit one of the NFL’s most vocal critics of police brutality after he was allegedly subjected to such brutality. “He wasn’t involved in any altercation,” Burris told me. “If they really were honorable on this point and they were conducting an investigation, they wouldn’t say that publicly. By doing it this way, they are essentially creating negative inferences about Michael, trying to reflect upon his character.”</p>
<p>Burris has good reason to believe the Vegas PD is not acting honorably. On Sept. 6, the day Bennett put his public statement on Twitter, Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said, “Like the rest of you, the LVMPD learned of Mr. Bennett’s allegations just this morning and an internal investigation has been opened.” Burris says Bennett’s representatives in fact made “repeated efforts to contact the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department about the incident.” Burris’ office sent me a copy of a public records request for video footage that they sent LVMPD on Aug. 29. When asked about that apparent inconsistency, the LVMPD again declined to comment.</p>
<p>The LVMPD’s treatment of Michael Bennett and its handling of Bennett’s allegations demonstrate what police officers view as normal behavior.</p>
<p>It’s considered normal to single out a black man in a crowd of fleeing people. It’s considered normal to point what appears to be a gun at the back of a man’s head as he’s on the ground submitting to arrest for a crime he didn’t commit, and that didn’t even occur. It’s considered normal to flout a state body camera law that’s supposed to ensure that police officers are accountable for their actions. It’s considered normal to fail to keep the public informed, and to clam up when asked about police regulations. And it’s considered normal to call a man a liar when he questions a police department that behaves in a way that none of us should accept as normal.</p>Sun, 17 Sep 2017 16:17:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/the_las_vegas_police_are_smearing_michael_bennett.htmlJeremy Stahl2017-09-17T16:17:00ZThe NFL star accused the Las Vegas police of violating his civil rights. Now the police are tarnishing his good name.SportsThe Las Vegas Police Are Smearing Michael Bennett100170917001sportsnflfootballpolice brutalityblack lives matterJeremy StahlSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/the_las_vegas_police_are_smearing_michael_bennett.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe Las Vegas police are smearing Michael Bennett:The Las Vegas police department and the police union have either implied or said outright that he’s a liar, a publicity hound, and a potential criminal.Dylan Buell/Getty ImagesMichael Bennett sits during the national anthem against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on Sept. 10.ESPN Is Letting the Conservative Trolls Winhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/espn_is_letting_the_conservative_trolls_win.html
<p>On Friday morning, the president of the United States brought his considerable idiocy to bear on the chief preoccupation of his White House tenure: people on cable TV who say things that hurt his feelings. “ESPN is paying a really big price for its politics (and bad programming),” <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/908651641943003136">Donald Trump wrote on Twitter</a>. “People are dumping it in RECORD numbers. Apologize for untruth!”</p>
<p>This particular conniption, which came 40 minutes after Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/908668794373050370">vomited out speculation</a> about an attack in London, was noteworthy less for its preening ignorance than its choice of target. Earlier this week, <em>SportsCenter</em> anchor Jemele Hill tweeted that <a href="https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/907391978194849793">Trump is a white supremacist</a> and “<a href="https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/907395085482033152">an unfit, bigoted, incompetent moron</a>.” On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Hill’s comments—which professional troll Clay Travis <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/espn-hasnt-learned-its-lesson-with-jemele-hill?via=twitter_page">amplified into a national outrage</a>—were a “fireable offense.” Trump’s appropriation of that outrage is at once depressing and unsurprising. What’s more remarkable is that ESPN’s behavior has been just as dumb as the president’s. The Worldwide Leader’s mealy-mouthed <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/908178745797816320">reprimand of Hill</a> and <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/jemele-hill-espn-off-air-53f2a4baf1af/">alleged attempt to persuade a black colleague</a> to take her place on the air reveal the network doesn’t understand what it’s dealing with. There is no appeasing the likes of Travis and Trump, and ESPN needs to stop acting as if there are good arguments on both sides of this particular debate.</p>
<p>ESPN’s recent PR strategy calls to mind <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ4Oo__D8X4">Homer Simpson’s plan to escape the inky depths of the Springfield Tar Pits</a>: “First, I’ll just reach in and pull my legs out. Now, I’ll pull my arms out with my face.” Last month, Travis reported that ESPN had pulled an announcer named Robert Lee—no relation to the Confederate general—from his assignment to call a University of Virginia football game in the aftermath of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/23/media/espn-robert-lee-john-skipper/index.html">In a memo explaining that decision</a>, ESPN president John Skipper wrote that “there was a question as to whether—in these divisive times—Robert’s assignment might create a distraction, or even worse, expose him to social hectoring and trolling.”</p>
<p>This attempt to protect Lee and/or the network from hectoring and trolling, naturally, brought on an enormous amount of hectoring and trolling, <a href="https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/msespn-pulls-asian-announcer-named-robert-lee-off-uva-game-avoid-offending-idiots/">with Travis</a> and more sensible types accusing ESPN of comically obtuse political correctness. And fair enough: It was stupid to remove Robert Lee from this particular college football telecast, although it would be more accurate to characterize this as a case of silly corporate overcautiousness rather than promotion of a liberal ethos.</p>
<p>Travis, whose prose stylings and <a href="https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/908774740365578240">on-camera persona</a> evoke Spuds MacKenzie humping an All Lives Matter poster, claims to have no political agenda. He says he just wants ESPN—which he calls MSESPN, in a “clever” nod to its supposed left-wing politics—to be consistent in its policing of political opinions. ESPN’s excessive liberalism, Travis and <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/10904/espn-admits-they-mistreat-conservatives-and-its-ben-shapiro">Ben Shapiro</a> and now the commander in chief have said, has caused its sagging ratings. Forget <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/04/conservative-media-is-wrong-cord-cutting---not-pol.html">cord-cutting and the broader decline of television viewership</a>. If ESPN hadn’t <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/02/did-too-much-caitlyn-jenner-doom-espn-215093">given Caitlyn Jenner an award</a>, and if it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/sports/baseball/curt-schilling-is-fired-by-espn.html?mcubz=3">hadn’t fired Curt Schilling</a> for comparing <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/08/curt-schilling-muslims-nazis-twitter-huh-mlb-godwins-law">Muslims (all of them) to Nazi-era Germans</a> and characterizing transgender people as subhuman, then the network’s subscriptions and Nielsen numbers would be soaring.</p>
<p>That argument is so clearly wrong that it has to be disingenuous. For Travis, though, bashing ESPN is good for business. No matter what moves ESPN makes, he will continue to mock and assail the network. Consider his response to <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPNPR/status/907683111693164545">ESPN’s initial statement</a> about Hill’s tweets, in which the sports giant said, “The comments on Twitter from Jemele Hill regarding the President do not represent the position of ESPN.” As <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/espn-hasnt-learned-its-lesson-with-jemele-hill">the <em>Daily Beast</em>’s Robert Silverman noted</a>, “Travis twisted ESPN’s statement to his advantage,” <a href="https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/907685439225647108">claiming</a> it indicated that the network actually approved of Hill’s message. This despite the fact that, as Silverman explained, “Travis wrote <a href="https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/on-curt-schilling-042116/">after Curt Schilling was fired by ESPN</a>, ‘The idea that corporations should somehow be connected to the opinions of their individual employees’ on social media is ‘manifestly ridiculous.’ ”</p>
<p>Rather than call out Travis’ opportunism and defend Hill after Sarah Huckabee Sanders called for her ouster, ESPN concocted a statement that both defended the <em>SportsCenter</em> anchor and hung her out to dry. “Jemele has a right to her personal opinions,” the network’s second statement began—free speech is good!—“but not to publicly share them on a platform that implies that she was in any way speaking on behalf of ESPN”—saying controversial things out loud is bad! “She has acknowledged that her tweets crossed that line and has apologized for doing so. We accept her apology.” Can we all be friends again?</p>
<p>ESPN has not yet figured out that it’s impossible to placate all possible constituencies when one of those constituencies lives in a state of perpetual pique. Travis and his fellow traveler Donald Trump were going to figure out a way to be angry no matter what ESPN said or did. The decline of cable also represents a much graver danger to ESPN’s business model than whatever vanishingly small number of viewers might take it upon themselves to boycott <em>SportsCenter</em> because one of its hosts thinks Trump is a moron. Given those two facts, it would’ve made a lot more sense for ESPN to say that Jemele Hill speaks for herself and no one else, that the network supports her right to do so, and … that’s about it. Instead, ESPN called Hill out publicly and reportedly would’ve slotted another anchor into <em>SportsCenter</em> on Wednesday <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/exactly-what-happened-to-jemele-hill-and-michael-smith-at-espn-on-wednesday-03a5aa226620/">if one of her co-workers had agreed to fill her seat</a>.</p>
<p>The Worldwide Leader’s actions in both the Lee and Hill episodes stem from fear of recrimination from the right. It’s a fear that’s motivated any number of this country’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/?utm_term=.a265b1a864d6">august institutions</a>. Earlier this week, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/us/harvard-nyu-prison-michelle-jones.html?smid=pl-share&amp;_r=2">the <em>New York Times</em> reported</a> that pooh-bahs at Harvard overturned the admission of Michelle Jones, who’d become a scholar of American history while serving a 20-plus-year prison stint for killing her young child. A pair of American studies professors at Harvard flagged Jones’ file for the school’s higher-ups. The <em>Times</em> quotes one as saying, “[F]rankly, we knew that anyone could just punch her crime into Google, and Fox News would probably say that P.C. liberal Harvard gave 200 grand of funding to a child murderer, who also happened to be a minority. I mean, c’mon.”</p>
<p>C’mon, indeed. If Harvard didn’t want to admit Michelle Jones, Harvard shouldn’t have admitted Michelle Jones. Basing that admissions decision on the supposition that Fox News might transform her story into its outrage of the week is perverse. Here’s a thought on what Harvard could’ve done if Tucker Carlson ranted about a child murderer on campus: ignored him. ESPN would be wise to take the same approach. Reactionaries are going to shout themselves hoarse no matter what concessions are made. The scramble to avoid being that week’s target, then, is pointless and futile. The only winning move is not to play.</p>
<p>Hill, for her part, seems to have a much better understanding of Travis’ project than her bosses do. “I feel like he’s playing a character,” <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/9/13/16299136/jemele-hill-espn-michael-smith-sportscenter-the-six">she told the <em>Ringer</em>’s Bryan Curtis in an excellent profile</a> published this week. “I would just like to know if he can generate any kind of traffic without ESPN’s name in his mouth.” Thanks to ESPN’s own actions, it’ll be a very long time before he’ll have to figure that out.</p>Fri, 15 Sep 2017 22:57:59 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/espn_is_letting_the_conservative_trolls_win.htmlJosh Levin2017-09-15T22:57:59ZIt’s the Worldwide Leader in self-inflicted wounds.SportsESPN Is Letting the Conservative Trolls Win100170915017sportsdonald trumpespnJosh LevinSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/espn_is_letting_the_conservative_trolls_win.htmlfalsefalsefalseESPN is letting the conservative trolls win:It’s the Worldwide Leader in self-inflicted wounds.Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters, John Sciulli/Getty Images for ESPN, and Latics/Wikipedia.President Donald Trump, ESPN host Jemele Hill, and Fox Sports journalist Clay Travis.The NBA Needs an Unlimited Data Planhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/tampering_with_nba_players_should_be_totally_legal.html
<p>If the Lakers don’t sign Paul George next summer, it won’t be for a lack of trying. Last week, the NBA announced that <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2017/08/31/lakers-500k-fine-tampering-paul-george">the team had made illegal contact</a> with the All-Star small forward while he was with the Indiana Pacers. (The Pacers have since traded George to Oklahoma City, where he will play out the final year of his contract before becoming a free agent.) The Lakers were judged to have violated the league’s tampering rules and fined $500,000.</p>
<p>The fine itself won’t make a dent. The Lakers will recoup that money through the sale of team-branded car flags and dog beds before preseason even begins. The fiscally meaningless penalty shouldn’t mean anything symbolically, either. The league’s tampering rule is ineffective and pointless. The best solution would be to abolish it completely.</p>
<p>The NBA combats tampering much like a condominium association combats lawn ornaments: with vague bylaws. According to Article 35A of the&nbsp;NBA constitution, “No person may, directly or indirectly, entice, induce, persuade, or attempt to entice, induce or persuade, any Player who is under contract to, or whose exclusive negotiating rights are held by, any other Member of the Association.” The big hunk of blue cheese in that word wedge salad is <em>indirectly</em>, and it gives the NBA commissioner discretion to punish teams for a wide range of allusions, gestures, and literary devices like metaphors, parataxis, and irony.</p>
<p>I am not being facetious. In 2010, Steve Kerr, then the president of basketball operations for the Phoenix Suns, mused on a radio show that he would try to sign free-agent-to-be LeBron James to a deal using the midlevel exception, which would make for a comically small contract. He was, in other words, making a joke. Even so, because James was still under contract with the Cavaliers, the NBA <a href="https://arizona.sbnation.com/2010/5/22/1483567/steve-kerr-fined-10k">fined Kerr $10,000</a> for his goofy aside.</p>
<p>Article 35A ostensibly exists to maintain competitive parity, as the league wants good players to stay with the organizations that drafted them. One way it does this is by allowing teams to offer existing players contracts that are loaded with financial incentives. The other way is by threatening to punish those who try to lure these players away. It’s telling that both these strategies protect ownership rather than the players. The NBA doesn’t want George to fully consider his future while he is under contract, and it will police his (or his agent’s) interactions to ensure he won’t. Players are making long-term life decisions worth tens of millions of dollars. Why should we expect them to wait until the free agency bonanza’s&nbsp;midnight starting gun to feel out the market? </p>
<p>That being said, the tampering rule exists primarily to keep up appearances. In light of the recent Lakers fine, <em>Bleacher Report</em>’s Ric Bucher <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2731438-nba-tampering-101-if-youre-not-cheating-youre-not-trying">spoke to a handful of general managers</a>,&nbsp;all of whom told him the same thing: Everyone tampers. “It has zero effect,” an anonymous Western Conference GM told Bucher regarding the Lakers’ punishment. “The whole league is built on [tampering],” said an Eastern Conference GM, which is actually a much better NBA slogan than “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4-RNTsgHLw">It’s FAN-tastic!</a>” Everyone knows everyone in the NBA. Players share agents. Coaches share agents. It’s hard to distinguish tampering from a normal conversation until someone complains and a fine is issued.</p>
<p>The big surprise is not that Lakers officials tampered with George or that the league levied such a heavy fine. It’s that Indiana reported the incident in the first place. By the sound of it, Pacers ownership lost its cool and, for lack of a better term, tattled. When asked about the situation, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban commiserated with Indiana. “It’s just the way it works,” <a href="http://www.richeisenshow.com/2017/08/22/dallas-mavericks-owner-mark-cuban-talks-lakers-tampering-accusation-more-82217/">he said</a>. “You do have your feelings hurt, you do get a little mad, and you do want to react and create some kind of retribution, but usually you calm down.”</p>
<p>NBA ownership is a fraternity of very rich men, and they keep their shenanigans a secret so long as the funny business is distributed evenly, just like the profits. This is why tampering punishments are typically issued only when team officials make public overtures, as in the case of the aforementioned Kerr interview. The Paul George contretemps falls under this rubric, as the Lakers originally came under scrutiny when team president Magic Johnson made some winking comments on <em>Jimmy Kimmel Live</em> in April. (The Pacers’ complaint sparked a league investigation, which found evidence implicating Lakers GM Rob Pelinka, and not Johnson, for more direct tampering.)&nbsp;</p>
<p>The tampering bylaw is a silly feint, and only good things would happen if it were to be rescinded. Sure, LeBron James would have to field hundreds of phone calls and text messages a day from desperate team executives. Then again, he’d also be permitted to publicly acknowledge these conversations and, as the kids say, put these thirsty dudes on blast. Rather than hide beneath layers of oblique assumptions and unwritten agreements, all those secret negotiations would be thrust out in the open. Team owners would be pitted against one another publicly, which is really how it should be.</p>
<p>While NBA old-timers love to chide modern players for being <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/kyrie_irving_lebron_james_and_the_nba_s_banana_boat.html">overly friendly</a>, it’s the owners who are too chummy. Racist slumlord and all-around creep Donald Sterling was allowed to run the Los Angeles Clippers for 33 years because his fellow owners didn’t speak out against him, even though his behavior was well-known by all. It wasn’t until <a href="http://www.tmz.com/videos/0_wkuhmkt8/"><em>TMZ</em> published a recording</a> of Sterling making racist comments that he was finally forced to sell the Clippers.</p>
<p>Sunlight isn’t just a great disinfectant. It’s also a pretty intoxicating balm. Just imagine how fun a tampering free-for-all would be.&nbsp;I, for one, would love to see NBA executives publicly de-pants the Orlando Magic–owning DeVos family (preferably figuratively) as they make their pitches to Aaron Gordon before he becomes a free agent in 2018. Billionaires only care about what other billionaires think of them, so it might actually hurt their feelings! If enough bad blood is fostered, we could even avoid a work stoppage when it comes time to negotiate the next collective bargaining agreement, as the owners will be too busy spitting in one another’s faces to bilk the players.</p>
<p>Think about it, Adam Silver. Your league has been dominating the summer sports doldrums thanks to player movement and drama. Just imagine what a good old-fashioned aristocratic cat fight would do for publicity. Scrap Article 35A and fans will be treated to the greatest soap opera imaginable. Who are you to tamper with our joy?</p>Fri, 08 Sep 2017 15:45:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/tampering_with_nba_players_should_be_totally_legal.htmlNick Greene2017-09-08T15:45:00ZTampering with pro basketball players should be totally legal.SportsTampering With NBA Players Should Be Totally Legal100170908007sportsbasketballnbaNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/tampering_with_nba_players_should_be_totally_legal.htmlfalsefalsefalseTampering with NBA players should be totally legal:Team owners would be pitted against one another publicly, which is really how it should be.Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty ImagesKobe Bryant goes up against Paul George during a 2012 game between the Lakers and the Pacers in Los Angeles.Caught Stealinghttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/the_red_sox_s_sign_stealing_scheme_was_less_nefarious_than_stupid.html
<p>On Tuesday, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/sports/baseball/boston-red-sox-stealing-signs-yankees.html?smid=tw-nytimes&amp;smtyp=cur&amp;_r=0"><em>New York Times </em>reported</a> the Boston Red Sox had been stealing catchers’ signs from the Yankees by putting a 21<sup>st</sup>-century twist on a 19<sup>th</sup>-century pursuit. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/06/sports/baseball/red-sox-steal-signs-yankees.html">this <em>Times</em> graphic explains</a>, TV-watching observers in the Red Sox clubhouse would decipher the opposing catcher’s hand signals, then pass along the cracked code via text message to a trainer sitting in the dugout via his Apple Watch. The watch-wearing trainer would then pass that information to Red Sox players on the bench, who would in turn pass the code along to a teammate on the base paths who would then signal the batter about what pitches to expect in real time. That’s it—as easy as one, two, three, four, five.</p>
<p>On the surface, this tale of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_videotaping_controversy">New England sports espionage</a> may seem not just sneaky but sinister. In reality, it’s less akin to cheating than going to a magic show and figuring out how the woman in the box got sawed in half. In both cases, the answer is there to be found if you look for it. Boston’s real transgression here wasn’t stealing signs. It was using technology where none was needed. Strapping on an Apple Watch was neither devious nor clever. It served only to make the scheme more obvious, and thus ultimately useless.</p>
<p>Adding a watch to the proceedings also took the effort from the realm of winked-at tradition into that of actual rule-breaking. By resorting to cameras and text messages to pilfer its opponents’ signs, the Red Sox crossed a red line that had been underscored as recently as 2000, when then-head of Major League Baseball operations Sandy Alderson warned, “No club shall use electronic equipment, including walkie-talkies and cellular telephones, to communicate to or with any on-field personnel. … Such equipment may not be used for the purpose of stealing signs or conveying information designed to give a club an advantage.”</p>
<p>Note that Alderson didn’t say anything about old-fashioned analog sign-stealing. This form of gamesmanship is, if not officially sanctioned, also not formally punished. If a team thinks its signs have been swiped, it has a number of on-field recourses, ranging from changing those signs to having the pitcher speed up his delivery to—as seemingly was <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/matt-chapman-ejected-after-argument-with-angels-over-alleged-sign-stealing/">on the verge of happening in Wednesday’s Angels–A’s game</a>—throwing punches. It’s hard to legislate against sign-stealing in any more formal way because it’s physically impossible to stop players and coaches from sometimes seeing things you didn’t intend them to see.</p>
<p>Still, you can always count on someone to push the boundaries of an already-permissive system, even if doing so doesn’t make much sense. Boston’s sign-stealing system, it must be said, was almost farcically baroque. Going back to the days of Grover Cleveland—the president, not the Hall of Fame pitcher—the same ends have been achieved by giving a lackey binoculars and a seat in the bleachers.</p>
<p>The downside to that basic, spy-in-the-stands technique is that the risk of discovery is high; opera glasses are pretty well-camouflaged at the opera but tend to stick out in the grandstand. They are almost as obvious when found appended to a face leering out of the scoreboard (the hand-operated kind, such as is still in use at Fenway Park), which has also been tried on countless occasions.</p>
<p>As such, teams have long pursued more clandestine means of sign-stealing. George Stallings, the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1897 and 1898, positioned reserve catcher Morgan Murphy in a window of the Baker Bowl’s center field clubhouse and equipped him with binoculars and a telegraph, the wire from which ran across the field to the third base coach’s box. In the same way a cellphone in your pocket will vibrate to alert you to an incoming call, Murphy’s wire alerted the coach to the next pitch: If the ground vibrated once, it would be a fastball, twice was a curve, and so on. The ruse was literally uncovered when Cincinnati Reds shortstop Tommy Corcoran stumbled rounding third. Realizing his spikes had caught on something, he reached down to pull up what he thought was a vine or root and found a wire that was more than 300 feet in length and had a catcher at the other end instead of a tree.</p>
<p>It’s important to note that Stallings’ Phillies, who went 74–104, did not seem to accrue much benefit from this ruse. Stallings’ team possessed future Hall of Fame hitters like Nap Lajoie, Elmer Flick, and Ed Delahanty. These were .300 hitters with the Phillies and with other teams, .300 hitters whether they were managed by Stallings or anybody else, .300 hitters with and without catchers dangling on wires. What Stallings’ team lacked was <em>pitching</em>, and no vibrating coach was going to improve hitters of already high quality to such a degree that Philadelphia could overcome the opposition, presumably unaided, belting the ball all over the yard.</p>
<p>The 2017 Red Sox, who are leading the American League East, have the opposite problem: great pitching and not enough hitting. The Boston offense is patient but lacks pop, with the team ranking last in the league in home runs and isolated power. It may have gained the occasional benefit from the sign-stealing scheme, however long it persisted, but the batters have not been gearing up and hitting purloined pitches over buildings. Both these ancient Phillies and the current Red Sox underscore the reality of grubbing for an extra advantage in baseball: Even if you know what’s coming, you still have to execute. While the Red Sox have several talented hitters, among them former MVP Dustin Pedroia, last year’s MVP runner-up Mookie Betts, and promising rookies Andrew Benintendi and Rafael Devers, this first team of the post–David Ortiz era is far from robust offensively. An advantage that one can’t exploit is hardly an advantage at all.</p>
<p>No less than Ralph Branca, the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher who gave up the pennant-winning “Shot Heard ’Round the World” to the New York Giants’ Bobby Thomson in 1951, concurred in this assessment when <a href="http://www.espn.com/classic/s/2001/0201/1054936.html">Josh Prager confirmed the existence</a> of a Giants sign-stealing operation in a 2001 piece for the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>. Those Giants, in the manner of the Phillies of the late 1800s, used a wire as a signaling mechanism, in their case sending that signal to the bullpen. Was Thomson tipped off about Branca’s pitch? Probably. Did it help him hit the home run? It’s impossible to know. Even when they’re not clued in, batters guess pitches correctly multiple times a game and yet don’t hit safely every time they do. As Branca said of Thomson, “He still hit the ball. He still hit a home run.”</p>
<p>The question of where a ballplayer’s skill ends and ill-gotten rewards begin will always be a tricky one. A few of the hitters caught using so-called performance-enhancing drugs, such as Barry Bonds, were godlike sluggers to begin with and could have reaped only the most marginal of improvements on the skills they already had. This is borne out by the examples of dozens of minor-league journeymen who have been sanctioned by baseball in the years since: Whether this produce was organic or filled with chemicals, it didn’t hit. Similarly, Thomson hit 32 home runs in 518 at-bats in 1951. Teammate Whitey Lockman, who presumably benefited from the same system, had 614 at-bats and hit 12. Player and manager Billy Martin, a sign-stealing practitioner himself, used to say that when it came to players you had your mules and you had your racehorses, and no matter how hard you beat the former they would never be the latter. You could hide a rocket engine under a mule’s saddle, and he still won’t outrun <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_o%27_War">Man o’ War</a>.</p>
<p>Joe DiMaggio was nearly injured when Yankees coach Chuck Dressen tried to pursue the redundant goal of making a great hitter greater in 1947. Dressen, who spent 32 years in the majors as a coach and manager, was famous for his sign-stealing abilities. DiMaggio, a .325 career hitter, didn’t need to know what was coming to hit and initially refused to take Dressen’s input. Yet, even so phlegmatic a personality as DiMaggio eventually yielded to temptation. The problem was that Dressen wasn’t infallible. In their initial outing as co-conspirators, Dressen told DiMaggio to expect a curve when what was really coming was a fastball, high and tight. The Clipper dug in and scoffed as the ball bore in on his skull, knowing it would break. It didn’t, and he only got out of the way at the last moment.</p>
<p>“That’s it,” DiMaggio told Dressen after. “Knock it off before you get me killed.” (As Roger Kahn wrote in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0803278128/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>Memories of Summer</em></a><em>, </em>in later retellings of the story DiMaggio admitted, “My language may have been a little stronger than that. A <em>lot </em>stronger.”) DiMaggio won his third Most Valuable Player award that fall while operating under his own instincts.</p>
<p>And yet, just because sign-stealing <em>mostly</em> isn’t worth it doesn’t mean it’s <em>never</em> worth it. Maybe. With an asterisk. Dressen managed Billy Martin in 1949, when he was a 21-year-old prospect with the 1949 Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. In 1953, when Martin, now a major-league infielder with the New York Yankees, faced the Dressen-managed Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, the skipper hadn’t changed his signs. Knowing what was coming, Martin feasted, going 12-for-24 with a double, two triples, and two home runs in six games. Baseball wouldn’t inaugurate the official World Series MVP award for another couple of years, but had it existed in 1953, Martin would almost certainly have won it. Taken in isolation, Martin’s postseason would seem to constitute ironclad proof that crime pays, but it doesn’t explain the 1952 World Series, in which Martin also faced a Dressen-led Dodgers team and hit .217.</p>
<p>By 1974, Martin had developed into a leading manager and a world-class paranoid. While running the Texas Rangers, he reportedly became so worried about sign-stealing that he relayed instructions to third base coach Frank Lucchesi <a href="https://thebaseballcodes.com/category/billy-martin/">via a walkie-talkie and earpiece</a> rather than using hand signals. Though the following story may be apocryphal, the takeaway that technology needlessly complicated things rings true. In a game against Boston’s Luis Tiant, the Rangers had a runner on third. Martin tried to call a play into Lucchesi, but for some reason—perhaps there was too much crowd noise, or the earpiece was picking up the local traffic and weather updates—the manager couldn’t make himself understood. Martin became more and more agitated until he was shouting into the radio, doing so loudly enough that Tiant finally turned to Lucchesi and said, &quot;Frank, Billy said he wants the suicide squeeze.&quot;</p>
<p>Balanced against this, we have something as basic as lip-reading. In Game 4 of the 1989 National League Championship Series, the Giants loaded the bases against Cubs starter Greg Maddux with Will Clark at the plate. As Clark stepped in, Cubs manager Don Zimmer came out to discuss strategy with his pitcher. Maddux did a poor job of hiding his mouth, so from 60 feet away Clark could clearly see him say the words “fastball in.” Maddux, with his usual unerring command, put the ball exactly where he intended, and Clark knocked it out of the park for a grand slam. Here’s another asterisk, though: That was Clark’s second home run of the game. He’d also hit a solo shot off Maddux the previous inning, with no lip-reading required.</p>
<p>No one complained about Clark’s little act of espionage because baseball has always drawn a line between technologically aided cheating and what a coach or player can accomplish by his wits. On two occasions, in 1992 and in 2000 with Alderson’s decree, MLB has banned electronic devices from the dugout. Apple Watches of the kind abused by the Red Sox were allowed as of 2015, but as timepieces rather than communications devices.</p>
<p>Whether as a result of lip-reading, careful observation, or telescopes and buzzers, no game dating back to the 1800s has been completely free of spycraft. As Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia <a href="http://sports-ak.espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/20609320/dustin-pedroia-boston-red-sox-insists-sign-stealing-part-game">said of the current scandal</a>, “It's been around a long, long time. We were doing that at Douglass Junior High School. … I don't think this should be news to everybody.” Pedroia is correct. Sign-stealing is baked in to the game. It’s not cheating, it’s gamesmanship, and the crime here is that the Red Sox thought they’d discovered something that hadn’t already occurred to George Stallings 120 years ago. </p>Thu, 07 Sep 2017 23:33:08 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/the_red_sox_s_sign_stealing_scheme_was_less_nefarious_than_stupid.htmlSteven Goldman2017-09-07T23:33:08ZLet’s marvel at the deep stupidity of the Red Sox’s sign-stealing scheme.SportsLet’s Marvel at the Deep Stupidity of the Red Sox’s Sign-Stealing Scheme100170907021baseballsportsappleSteven GoldmanSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/the_red_sox_s_sign_stealing_scheme_was_less_nefarious_than_stupid.htmlfalsefalsefalseLet’s marvel at the deep stupidity of the Red Sox’s sign-stealing scheme:Strapping on an Apple Watch was neither devious nor clever.Corey Perrine/Getty ImagesThe Boston Red Sox celebrate a win over the New York Yankees on Sept. 1 in New York City.Ugly Americanshttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/what_s_wrong_with_the_u_s_men_s_national_soccer_team_and_how_to_fix_it.html
<p>The U.S. men’s national soccer team <a href="https://www.si.com/soccer/2017/09/05/usa-honduras-world-cup-qualifying-bobby-wood-arena-usmnt">managed a disappointing 1–1 victory</a> in its World Cup qualifier in Honduras&nbsp;on Tuesday night. It was disappointing because no one who watched the American men struggle to break down first Costa Rica&nbsp;in a 2–0 loss on Friday&nbsp;and then Honduras can be left feeling upbeat about the team’s immediate future. It was a victory because the national team earned a point by virtue of Tuesday’s draw, which could make all the difference for the team’s chances of making it to Russia next summer. The American World Cup alarm hasn’t been shut off entirely, but Bobby Wood’s 85<sup>th</sup> minute equalizer&nbsp;Tuesday&nbsp;at least hit the snooze button.</p>
<p>The U.S. now sits fourth in the final round of North American qualifying, tied with Honduras on points but well ahead on the goal differential tiebreaker thanks largely to the 6–0 drubbing the U.S. administered back in March in a match that left everyone breathless with excitement for the team’s new, post-Klinsmann era. If Bruce Arena’s national team finishes in fourth after its final two qualifiers next month, it will face a two-game playoff against the fifth-place team in the Asian confederation—either Syria or Australia—for a spot in the World Cup.</p>
<p>There are two pieces of good news here. The first is that in 2010 that playoff game would’ve been against the fifth-placed South American team, which this year is Argentina. That would not be fun. (In 2014, when Mexico finished fourth, they got to go up against New Zealand. Lucky.) The second is that the next qualifier, on Oct. 6, is at home against third-place Panama, and a win will flip the two teams in the standings and put the U.S. in a position from which qualification is almost guaranteed. (The last qualifier is on Oct. 10 on the road against Trinidad and Tobago, which is securely in last place in the six-team qualifying group.)</p>
<p>Take away that single point from Tuesday’s match, or, more importantly, give Honduras the two more they would have earned with a win, and next month’s game against Panama becomes a battle royale for the right to go home and away with either Syria or Australia. While the U.S. still has to win against Panama next month, a victory there will now essentially be the difference between third and fifth, advancing directly to the World Cup or staying home. (Should they draw, the U.S. will need a probably-already-qualified Costa Rica to get a win or draw in Panama in their last game to have a chance at third.)</p>
<p>That’s just about the end of the good news. In two straight matches, the U.S. looked toothless in attack and error-prone on defense. Arena got his starting lineup wrong twice. Age may have finally caught up to Tim Howard. And CONCACAF teams may have finally figured out the key to stopping Christian Pulisic: Keep sending more guys to kick him, because the referees aren’t going to stop all of them.</p>
<p>Worryingly, the U.S. defense faltered not at its weak points but at its strengths. Geoff Cameron’s big pluses are his organization of the back line and his distribution, and yet&nbsp;Friday&nbsp;he and his central defense partner Tim Ream left <a href="https://twitter.com/HeyHayward/status/903764235494285313">a gap roughly the width of Costa Rica</a> for Marco Ure&ntilde;a to stroll through on the first goal, and Cameron’s bad giveaway led to the second. Similarly, Omar Gonzalez is lauded for his ability to put out fires on the back line, but his misjudged tackle after Romell Quioto beat an overmatched Graham Zusi left Brad Guzan all alone on the Honduras goal.</p>
<p>In both games the U.S. structure appeared too rigid, the roles within the team so well-defined that opponents know exactly how to game-plan for them. Darlington Nagbe had appeared to be the solution to years of struggles against opponents who realized that pressuring Michael Bradley was the key to severing the supply lines from defense to attack, but now Nagbe’s teammates seem completely unprepared for the fact that the other guys have a plan to stop him, too.</p>
<p>Something similar is happening with Pulisic. It feels as though the U.S. assumed that the rest of North America would continue to shrug and say, “He’s only 18. What can he do to us?” Arena and the team have failed to counter their opponent’s counters. These teams aren’t better than the U.S., but they are better at being reactive than the Americans are at being proactive.</p>
<p>What might a solution look like ahead of the maximum-marble match against Panama? More fluidity couldn’t hurt, with players other than Bradley being called on both to defend and to help in the build-up and players other than Pulisic being asked to combine creative and goal-scoring responsibilities. That’s probably easier to pull off in the lone forward setup the U.S. tried&nbsp;Tuesday, but historically the U.S. has treated any lineup that doesn’t include two forwards as a wackadoo experiment, as if the coach were trying to install the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_option">triple option</a> midseason. That’s the case even though most of the players in the national team pool line up in versions of the 4-2-3-1—four defenders, two deep center midfielders, three attacking midfielders spread across the width of the field, and a lone striker—at their club teams.</p>
<p>More likely is a return to something like a 3-5-2, sacrificing width to pack the midfield and add the insurance of another central defender. That would likely bring Pulisic into the middle as the primary playmaker after two games in which he started on the right wing, where he looked dangerous but finished with little to show for it. That should help, but the team might be better off pushing Pulisic into the forward line and including another playmaker who can get him the ball in dangerous spots, asking him to beat the final man instead of the first, second, and third who are all going to shade toward him because they know he’s the one they have to stop.</p>
<p>If there is reason for optimism, it’s that Arena knows something is going to have to change before next month’s games, perhaps drastically. He’s got one chance to find the right combination to unlock this team’s potential, or else his successor will have a long time to plan for 2022.</p>Wed, 06 Sep 2017 17:52:54 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/what_s_wrong_with_the_u_s_men_s_national_soccer_team_and_how_to_fix_it.htmlEric Betts2017-09-06T17:52:54ZThe U.S. men’s national soccer team looks putrid, and World Cup qualification is in peril. Here’s how to fix it.SportsHow the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team Can Fix Its Putrid Play and Qualify for the World Cup100170906009sportssoccerEric BettsSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/what_s_wrong_with_the_u_s_men_s_national_soccer_team_and_how_to_fix_it.htmlfalsefalsefalseHow the U.S. men’s national soccer team can fix its putrid play and qualify for the World Cup:Play Christian Pulisic up top, for one thing.Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty ImagesUSA’s Christian Pulisic (left) and Honduras’ Alfredo Mejia collide during their 2018 World Cup qualifier match in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on Tuesday.Baseball Is Brokenhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/baseball_is_broken_and_the_sport_s_pooh_bahs_have_no_power_to_fix_it.html
<p><em>This story originally appeared in the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter. Learn more about the newsletter and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/SheehanNewsletter/"><em>subscribe on Facebook</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p>Around&nbsp;10 p.m. EDT&nbsp;Tuesday&nbsp;night, Brad Miller yanked a 2–1 slider from Brandon Maurer over the right-field wall in Kauffman Stadium, drawing the Rays to within a run of the Royals at 3–2 in a game they’d lose 6–2. The homer wasn’t anything special in itself, save for being the 5,000<sup>th</sup> home run of the 2017 season. It’s the 12<sup>th</sup> time in baseball history, all since expansion to 30 teams in 1998, that we’ve had at least 5,000 home runs hit in a single season. At the current pace, the record for home runs in a season, currently 5,693, will be broken with plenty of time to spare (as one insightful analyst <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fancy-stats/wp/2017/04/03/mlbs-biggest-surprises-for-2017-will-include-the-tampa-bay-rays-in-the-playoffs/?utm_term=.c4346ab7027f">predicted</a> in April). There’s a chance we see 6,000 home runs hit this season, though the usual slowdown in power output in September will affect that.</p>
<p>Miller seems like the right guy to have hit No. 5,000, as he’s representative of the changes in the game. As a shortstop at Clemson, Miller hit for high averages with lots of doubles and he walked more than he struck out. After being drafted, he continued along that path, hitting 40 doubles and drawing 74 walks at two levels in the Mariners’ system in 2012. In the high minors, he lost some control of the strike zone, but even in two full seasons in Seattle, 2014 and 2015, Miller hit 37 doubles and eight triples against just 21 homers, and he walked in about 9 percent of his plate appearances, with a 2.5–1 strikeout-to-walk ratio.</p>
<p>That player is gone. In 2016, Miller became a dead-pull hitter trying to sell out for power. A big home run–to–fly ball year—20.4 percent of his flies left the yard, double his career rate—led to 30 homers, but the approach also pumped his strikeout rate to 25 percent and his strikeout-to-walk ratio to more than 3. In 2017, Miller’s HR/FB has reverted to career rates, 11.1 percent, and he’s now a two-true-outcomes hitter: 92 strikeouts and 56 walks in 331 plate appearances, but just seven home runs and a .195/.332/.331 slash line. A hitter with a broad base of skills is now Chris Carter without the power.</p>
<p>Miller’s arc is a cautionary tale for a game that is entirely reliant on the home run to produce offense. Three seasons ago, about 1 in 3 runs, 33.4 percent, were scored on home runs. That’s a high figure historically, but not unreasonably so. In 1994, which of course seemed like a huge hitting year at the time, it was 33.5 percent. In 1961, an expansion year in which a notable home run record was set, it was 33.7 percent. Here’s where we’ve gone since then:</p>
<p><u>It’s All or Nothing<br /> </u> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;HR/FB% &nbsp;Rank<br /> 2014 &nbsp; 33.4 &nbsp; &nbsp; 26<br /> 2015 &nbsp; 37.3&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 3<br /> 2016 &nbsp; 40.2&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 2<br /> 2017 &nbsp; 42.6&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 1</p>
<p><em>(Rank is among 68 seasons for which </em>Baseball Prospectus<em> has data.)</em></p>
<p>Prior to 2015, the record for homer reliance had been set in 2004, at 37 percent. Each of the past three years has broken that number. We crossed over 40 percent last season and have left that in the dust in 2017, seemingly on our way to 50 percent or higher. Some of that is home runs; if you hit 6,000 home runs, they’re going to account for a larger percentage of scoring than when you hit 5,000 or 4,000. The record HR/FB rate, a product of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/6/14/16044264/2017-mlb-home-run-spike-juiced-ball-testing-reveal-155cd21108bc">the Pro V1 baseball</a> and hitters hacking at it like they’re holding seven-irons, is the single biggest culprit. Typically, home run rates rise as overall offense rises. This is where the game of the mid-2010s separates from history.</p>
<p><u>Homers, All the Way Down (Highest HR/H%)<br /> </u>2017 &nbsp; 14.6<br /> 2016 &nbsp; 13.3<br /> 2000 &nbsp; 12.6<br /> 2001 &nbsp; 12.4<br /> 2004 &nbsp; 12.2</p>
<p>If you’re younger than30, it may be hard for you to remember the way people were losing their minds over the way baseball was played at the turn of the century. The reaction to that style changed baseball history, and not for the better. The style of play now is far more extreme than what we saw then. Just two years ago, home runs were 11.7 percent of hits. A total of 1 in 7 hits is now a home run. Home runs are up, but nothing else is. Home runs are crowding everything else out.</p>
<p><u>Homers, All the Way Down, Remix (Percentage of All Hits)<br /> </u> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; HR/H &nbsp; 2B+3B/H 1B/H<br /> 2017&nbsp; &nbsp; 14.6&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 21.6 &nbsp; &nbsp; 63.8<br /> 2016&nbsp; &nbsp; 13.3&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 21.6 &nbsp; &nbsp; 65.1<br /> 2015&nbsp; &nbsp; 11.7&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 21.8 &nbsp; &nbsp; 66.5<br /> 2014&nbsp; &nbsp; 10.1&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 21.6 &nbsp; &nbsp; 68.3<br /> 2013&nbsp; &nbsp; 11.1&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 21.4 &nbsp; &nbsp; 67.6</p>
<p><em>(Doubles and triples are lumped together because triples are a small sample, and generally just a subset of doubles—doubles plus ballpark and speed and situation.)</em></p>
<p>Remember singles? I remember singles, but then again, I also remember being a human remote control for my mom in the 1970s. Prior to 1986, singles had never accounted for fewer than 70 percent of hits in a season. Prior to 1998, they’d never accounted for fewer than two-thirds of hits. We’re a couple years away from them being fewer than 60 percent of hits. The sharp downturn over the past couple of seasons? That’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/sports/mlb-launch-angles-story/?utm_term=.d68acec64f0a">the fly ball revolution</a>, and to some extent, the increased use of shifts. We’re on pace to have just shy of 27,000 singles hit this year; that would be the fewest in a full season since 1992, when there were just 26 teams in the league and offense was at the end of a five-year period you could call Deadball III.</p>
<p>This is the highest-scoring season since 2007, but even with all the home runs, it’s not a particularly high-scoring season in baseball history. We’re at 4.66 runs per team per game, which would be 64<sup>th</sup> of 147 dating to 1871. The turn-of-the-century home run peak ... well, what we thought was a peak ... featured 5.1 runs per team per game, highest since the 1930s. It’s taking the highest home run rate in baseball history to produce just a slightly above-average offensive environment.</p>
<p>What happens when the balls revert back to normal?</p>
<p>I’m completely on board with the idea that Major League Baseball hasn’t intentionally altered the baseballs to produce more offense. The baseballs, however, are <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/in-mlbs-new-home-run-era-its-the-baseballs-that-are-juicing/">clearly</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/it-looks-like-the-baseball-is-behind-mlbs-power-surge/">at the</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/6/14/16044264/2017-mlb-home-run-spike-juiced-ball-testing-reveal-155cd21108bc">top end</a> of the allowable range, which is the biggest part of why we have a 14 percent HR/FB rate. MLB’s lack of control over the baseballs, however, leaves the game hanging by a thread. What happens when the baseballs, which seemed to change overnight in 2014, change again? What happens when a game dominated by strikeouts and home runs sees one of those become that much harder to get?</p>
<p>There are baseball fans who prefer a low-run environment. That’s a perfectly valid choice, but I’m not sure those fans have thought through what happens if you combine a low run environment with a 25 percent strikeout rate. The reason I write so much about this stuff is that baseball’s entertainment value is lacking. It’s masked by successful mallparks and the need cable networks have for summer programming, but the game on the field is incredibly stagnant. The Guillen Number (runs on homers as a percentage of all runs) is one measure of that, as is the rate of three true outcomes, as is the rate of singles, as is all of the data I’ve been throwing at you for a while.</p>
<p>If you took home runs out of 2010s baseball, you would get a game that is basically unwatchable. It wouldn’t be the 1960s, when games were played in large ballparks and singles and balls in play were enough a part of the game to make one-run strategies viable. There was also enough reliance on starting pitchers to create stars in that environment. No, you’d get the worst of all worlds, a low-offense, low-singles, high-strikeout game in which most starters pitch six innings and are followed into the game by an army of anonymous “baseball players” whose jobs “playing baseball” have been reduced to throwing 15 pitches three days a week and striking out a third of the batters they face.</p>
<p>The danger isn’t of that happening. The danger is that MLB has absolutely no control over whether it happens.</p>
<p>One of the things we know is that baseball’s popularity is tied to run scoring. For all the words written about the glory days, baseball was struggling in the 1960s during Deadball II, and it was in that period that the NFL made up enormous ground and set the stage for becoming the most popular sports league in the country. A 10-runs-a-game environment will bring out complaints from purists, and maybe a witch hunt or two, but it will pack the stands. An eight-runs-a-game environment is a problem for everyone’s wallets. The only thing keeping baseball out of the latter right now, keeping the game out of Deadball IV, is something it doesn’t control.</p>Fri, 01 Sep 2017 20:21:06 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/baseball_is_broken_and_the_sport_s_pooh_bahs_have_no_power_to_fix_it.htmlJoe Sheehan2017-09-01T20:21:06ZIf you took home runs out of the game, you would get a sport that is basically unwatchable.SportsBaseball Is Broken, and the Sport’s Pooh-bahs Have No Power to Fix It100170901015sportsbaseballJoe SheehanSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/09/baseball_is_broken_and_the_sport_s_pooh_bahs_have_no_power_to_fix_it.htmlfalsefalsefalseIf you took home runs out of 2010s baseball, you would get a sport that is basically unwatchable:If you took home runs out of the game, you would get a sport that is basically unwatchable.Mike Zarrilli/Getty ImagesRight-fielder Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins hits a two-run home run against the Atlanta Braves at SunTrust Park on Aug. 4 in Atlanta.He Doesn’t Fit the Systemhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/kaepernick_isn_t_getting_blackballed_nfl_execs_say_they_re_just_racist.html
<p>With a week to go before the start of the NFL regular season, Colin Kaepernick remains unsigned. In <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/08/31/colin-kaepernick-nfl-blackball-national-anthem-protests">an “investigation” for <em>Sports Illustrated</em>’s MMQB</a>—one that begins, helpfully, with the Merriam-Webster definition of <em>blackball&shy;</em>—Albert Breer explains that Kaepernick’s “situation is more complicated than many want to concede.” Breer quotes three NFL executives and one coach, all of whom were “granted anonymity in pursuit of honesty.” None of the four said his anthem protests played a role in their decision not to offer him a contract. All four said that Kaepernick simply isn’t a good on-field fit.</p>
<p>Although Breer doesn’t seem to understand what these answers show in aggregate, you don’t have to be a scholar of critical race theory to understand what’s going on here.</p>
<p>Here’s the source Breer calls “Executive 1”:</p>
<blockquote>
Physically, Kaepernick’s more talented, but familiarity with a backup at that position, knowing exactly what you’re going to get, is more important than the “wow” factor. … It’s like with [Robert Griffin III]; you had him playing a certain way, and he was a hell of a player. But as soon as defenses figured out what they were, and a specific way to play them, that’s where they had to be able to start to win from the pocket. If you can’t do that in this league, it’s tough.
</blockquote>
<p>And Executive 2:</p>
<blockquote>
For us, it was a system thing. What he does well is totally outside what most teams do. And so here’s my question: I understand the Kaepernick deal, why it’s news, but nobody’s talking about RG3? I know since it’s Kaepernick, it’s what sells, but the problem that RG3 has getting a job is the same as Kaepernick for a lot of teams.
</blockquote>
<p>Executive 3:</p>
<blockquote>
I don’t like the guy as a player. I don’t think he can play.&nbsp;…&nbsp; He’s inaccurate, inconsistent reading defenses.&nbsp;… And you consider that, why isn’t there a debate about RG3?
</blockquote>
<p>In three separate conversations, three different executives made the same comparison between Kaepernick and Robert Griffin III. On one level, it’s strange that they all said the exact same thing. On another level, it’s not strange at all.</p>
<p>Why isn’t it a scandal that Griffin remains unsigned? Because <a href="http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/qb">every advanced stat</a> in existence shows <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/qbr/_/page/2/qualified/false">he was one of the worst</a> quarterbacks in the NFL last year. Also, the injury-plagued Griffin got hurt and missed 11 games after he’d been plugged in as the Cleveland Browns’ starter. It’s not Griffin’s fault that he injured his shoulder. Even so, he’s been bedeviled by injuries throughout his career and has only played five games in the past two seasons. I would not be super excited to sign Robert Griffin III circa September 2017.</p>
<p>Kaepernick wasn’t exactly Tom Brady last season, but he was a lot better than Griffin. At this stage, Kaepernick has the skills and r&eacute;sum&eacute; to be an NFL starter, and he has a track record of good health. Griffin has none of those things. That’s how the quarterbacks are different. Here’s how they’re similar: They’re both black.</p>
<p>If you think race isn’t relevant here, take a listen to Breer’s anonymous coach:</p>
<blockquote>
[Kaepernick is] not a pocket passer. So if you bring him in as a backup, and you’re not Seattle or Carolina, and you don’t have those things built in, it’s like you’re running a different offense with your 1s and your 2s. Mike Shanahan had a great theory on this—he wanted to draft Russell Wilson (in 2012), because if something happened to Robert (Griffin), the transition would be clean and easy. So Kaepernick almost has to be in a place where they’ll build a system for him, and teams don’t do that for backups.
</blockquote>
<p>Seattle and Carolina are quarterbacked by Russell Wilson and Cam Newton, both of whom are black. So Kaepernick is not being blackballed. It’s just that the only place for him in the NFL is as a backup quarterback on a team with a black starter.</p>
<p><a href="https://slate.com/sports/2017/08/colin-kaepernicks-protest-cost-him-his-job-but-started-a-movement.html">As I wrote a few weeks ago</a>, the idea that Kaepernick isn’t a natural fit for the NFL is based on the outmoded belief that black quarterbacks are necessarily “mobile quarterbacks” and that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/briangoff/2017/06/22/nfl-giving-colin-kaepernick-the-tebow-treatment/#4e1c877817e2">they need specially engineered offenses</a> to showcase what they do best. But as <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2017/8/14/16058454/colin-kaepernick-film-breakdown-free-agency"><em>SB Nation</em>’s Stephen White has shown</a>, “the overwhelming majority of passes that [Kaepernick] threw last year came from the pocket.” In addition, Kaepernick performed <em>better</em> from inside the pocket than he did while throwing the ball on the run.</p>
<p>These notions of what Colin Kaepernick can and can’t do, then, are not based on what Colin Kaepernick can and can’t do. Rather, they’re distillations of decades of received wisdom about what players who share Kaepernick’s skin color can and can’t do. (And that’s the case, by the way, even if one or more of these anonymous NFL power brokers isn’t white.)</p>
<p>Near the bottom of his Kaepernick item, Breer quotes an unnamed AFC executive who says that “at the end of the day, we’re part of the ultimate meritocracy. So if someone feels like this guy can help win games, he’ll be in the league.” Ah, yes, the ultimate meritocracy, a league in which 70 percent of the players are black and the overwhelming majority of quarterbacks are white.</p>
<p>Thanks to Breer’s story, it’s now clear that some proportion of NFL decision-makers think Kaepernick and the league’s other prominent unsigned black quarterback are exactly the same. There’s only one word that describes that line of thinking, and it’s not <em>meritocracy</em>.</p>Thu, 31 Aug 2017 14:54:25 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/kaepernick_isn_t_getting_blackballed_nfl_execs_say_they_re_just_racist.htmlJosh Levin2017-08-31T14:54:25ZAnonymous NFL execs say they’re not blackballing Colin Kaepernick. They’re just racist.SportsAnonymous NFL Execs: We’re Not Blackballing Kaepernick, We’re Just Racist100170831003nflfootballsportsraceJosh LevinSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/kaepernick_isn_t_getting_blackballed_nfl_execs_say_they_re_just_racist.htmlfalsefalsefalseAnonymous NFL execs: We’re not blackballing Kaepernick, we’re just racist.What the league’s power brokers are talking about when they say Colin Kaepernick and Robert Griffin III are exactly the same.Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images and Nick Cammett/Diamond Images/Getty Images.What do Colin Kaepernick and Robert Griffin III have in common?Does Fantasy Football Ruin Football Fandom?http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/does_fantasy_football_ruin_football_fandom.html
<p>Last week, ESPN embarrassed itself with an on-air fantasy football auction that was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4asglSLdWRU">jokily staged</a> with an audience of mostly white men bidding on various NFL players, some of whom were black. This cringe-worthy evocation of chattel slavery—which the network half-apologized for, limply noting that its “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/us/espn-fantasy-football-auction/index.html">optics could be portrayed as offensive</a>”—made it on the air at least in part because ESPN needed to fill airtime during a 28-hour-long “Fantasy Football Marathon.” Despite a recent, <a href="https://medium.com/prosper-suite/5-strategies-behind-espns-layoffs-growth-of-the-organization-7a405a566b9a">major round of layoffs</a>, ESPN has doubled down on fantasy, extending the contract of its leading <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MYwtdN7aqA">fantasy guru</a> through <a href="http://awfulannouncing.com/2016/espn-extends-matthew-berry-through-2021.html">2021</a> and giving him both a <a href="http://awfulannouncing.com/nfl/espn-to-launch-weekday-fantasy-football-show-with-matthew-berry.html">daily and a weekly show</a>. All of this is meant to serve a population of consumers that’s been growing at an astounding rate: According to the latest survey run by Ipsos for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, the player pool now comprises 59 million people in the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., its reach extends to <a href="http://fsta.org/research/industry-demographics/">21 percent of the population</a> (excluding children).</p>
<p>While ESPN tries to reckon with—and cater to—a continental drift within its base, last week’s blunder and its offensive “optics” shed light on what these changes signify. As the on-air auction awkwardly depicted, fantasy-football players don’t root in the manner of traditional sports fans, as a member of the crowd that backs a specific team. Now their fandom is more personal: They <em>own</em> specific athletes—they make a choice to draft or purchase them—and then, in the context of their fantasy leagues, the athletes’ success redounds to them and them alone. In other words, fantasy transforms the relationship between football fans and football in a fundamental way, and as the industry grows ever larger, no one knows exactly how this transformation will play out.</p>
<p>“I think the NFL, in the long run, is going to have a brand-consistency issue,” says Brendan Dwyer, an associate professor of sport leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, “because people are not going to be interested in who wins games anymore.” Dwyer first began to study fantasy football as a graduate student in 2007. “I saw how people behaved during the games at sports bars,” he says. “I saw how torn they were, and I saw the cognitive dissonance they felt in watching both their favorite team and their fantasy team.” It was a pain he recognized: Dwyer is both a fantasy-team owner and a hardcore Packers fan, and he’s never drafted Green Bay’s quarterback Aaron Rodgers in any of his leagues. “I know that at least once a year, sometimes twice, Rodgers will be played against me—and I’m going to feel bad if he does well.”</p>
<p>That conflict raised a research question: Might the growth of fantasy eat away at the classic forms of fandom, and all the pleasures they provide?</p>
<p>For a time, the NFL was wary, too. Like gambling, fantasy football appeared to be a fragmentary force: Instead of rooting for one specific team, fantasy gamers had divided loyalties. That meant the value of the home-team brand could be under threat. Indeed, game attendance had started <a href="http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/07/08/after-peaking-in-2007-nfl-attendance-steadily-has-declined/">going down</a> in 2007, around the time that fantasy was <a href="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/561c070ebd86ef1d5d8b6037-800-600/01.png">taking off</a>, and the drop-off <a href="http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2016/01/05/Research-and-Ratings/NFL-gate.aspx">never stopped</a>. It was also around 2007 that networks started to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_on_CBS#HDTV_coverage">broadcast more games in high definition</a>, which likely contributed to depressing in-stadium attendance. But it seemed plausible, at least, that the growth of fantasy might have exacerbated the effect.</p>
<p>Dwyer was not the only academic who saw the sudden need to understand this market shift. Andrew Billings, director of the University of Alabama Program in Sports Communication, got involved a few years later. “The basic premise of sports media research is that people watch or seek out sports to see who wins,” he says, “and fantasy sports seemed to put that in question.” Billings joined up with a young sports-management scholar and fantasy enthusiast named Brody Ruihley, and they began to look at the psychology of different types of fans. (They’ve since co-authored a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Sport-Industry-Routledge-Research/dp/0415525187">textbook</a> on the fantasy sports industry.) For one study, Billings and Ruihley asked 1,261 sports consumers, both traditional and fantasy types, to describe their motivations. How much would they agree with statements such as: “I get pumped up when I am watching my team”; “Seeing my favorite non-fantasy team win is important to me”; “Winning at fantasy sport improves my self-esteem”; or “I like helping people by providing them with information about fantasy sport”?</p>
<p>To their surprise, Billings and Ruihley found fantasy fans showed pretty much the same motivations as traditional fans, but at much higher levels. Those who played fantasy reported feeling more personally invested in their home team’s success, more enjoyment from their fandom, and more intense enthusiasm for the sport overall. In other words, they did not appear to be the tortured souls that Dwyer observed in sports bars. Rather, they were more like regular sports fans whose fanship had been dialed up. “The dichotomy is not ‘traditional versus fantasy,’ ” Billings and Ruihley concluded, “<a href="http://www.cubanxgiants.com/berry/205/readings/billings_fantasysport.pdf">but, more aptly, one of ‘fan versus superfan.’</a> ” Another of their studies, headed up by <a href="http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04142011-162307/unrestricted/leethesis.pdf">Jeremy Lee</a>, found that a fan’s level of involvement in fantasy football is in fact <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/509642/pdf">positively associated</a> with her declared loyalty to, and identification with, her favorite team.</p>
<p>Data on media consumption habits would confirm the notion that fantasy players are a special breed of superfans. In 2010, ESPN’s Department of Integrated Media Research reported that fantasy fans were spending almost 23 hours on the network’s content every week compared with just seven hours for traditional consumers. This makes sense: A fantasy football fan has rooting interests on lots of different NFL teams, so he might be watching games from Thursday evening through Monday night. He’ll want to check in on the pregame shows to see if there’s any late-breaking news that might necessitate a lineup adjustment, and he’ll keep watching even when his local team is floundering. Ruihley, a Cincinnati sports fan, says fantasy keeps him engaged even when the Bengals have been eliminated from Super Bowl contention.</p>
<p>Now it began to seem as though fantasy sports were adding, not subtracting, from the NFL’s success. Not only were fantasy players spending more time on football programming, they were also drawing friends and family members into their leagues. If fans were turning into superfans, then maybe <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew_Walker7/publication/263666217_The_NASCAR_experience_Examining_the_influence_of_fantasy_sport_participation_on_'non-fans'/links/5731f37c08ae9f741b234ef5.pdf">nonfans were also turning into fans</a>. Pro teams now do everything they can to court the turbo-charged fantasy consumer. That means constructing in-stadium fantasy-friendly <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/draftkings-to-open-fantasy-lounges-at-att-stadium-gillette-stadium--arrowhead-stadium-to-kick-off-the-football-season-300133579.html">lounges and pavilions</a>, with <a href="http://www.venuestoday.com/news/detail/bringing-fantasy-into-football-0916">walls of televisions and open Wi-Fi</a>, on the theory that a fantasy fan’s loyalties are not so divided as to be an obstacle to ticket sales.</p>
<p>That’s a questionable assumption, though. When Dwyer surveyed 325 fans in 2009, he found that the more people were invested in fantasy football, the more loyalty they claimed to have to their favorite nonfantasy sports teams. Then he asked them what they’d do if their favorite team were on television at the same time as the team with their highest-scoring fantasy player. In that case, the most invested fantasy players said they’d be <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brendan_Dwyer/publication/235759436_Divided_Loyalty_An_Analysis_of_Fantasy_Football_Involvement_and_Fan_Loyalty_to_Individual_National_Football_League_NFL_Teams/links/02bfe513372f4d1058000000.pdf">less likely to watch their favorite team</a>. “In the end they will try to watch their fantasy players, even though they’re saying ‘I’m a Packers fan, first and foremost,’ ” says Dwyer.</p>
<p>Anyone who’s played fantasy football has seen the various ways this tension gets resolved in practice. Some owners try to mitigate any potential conflict by drafting players from their favorite team, or by avoiding players from division rivals. In April, a group of business researchers in Massachusetts published an attempt to categorize the range of these behaviors, in the context of “<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1441352316300316">consumer coping mechanisms</a>.” Some fantasy players resort to something called “balanced interest rooting” while others may engage in “benefit-seeking interest shifts” to maximize enjoyment. Another common practice is “divergent roster selection,” wherein the owner leans into his divided loyalties: If he’s a Packers fan like Dwyer, he deliberately avoids picking Aaron Rodgers; that way he knows that he’ll have reason to be happy however Rodgers performs. (If Rodgers plays well, it’s good for the Packers. If he plays poorly, it’s bad for one of his fantasy rivals.)</p>
<p>Many of these strategies, which hedge against the risk of disappointment, strike me as a little sad. Don’t they hedge just as well against the thrill of victory? We know playing fantasy football makes fans more obsessive and capacious in their sports-media consumption. But what happens to the joy of fandom when we shift our rooting interest from specific teams to a batch of players spread throughout the league? Might our pleasure get divided, too?</p>
<p>Classic research in the field asserts that sports fans tend to “bask in reflected glory,” or “<a href="https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/basking-in-reflected-glory/">BIRG</a>,” following a home-team victory. By identifying with their favorite team—“<a href="http://www.academia.edu/570635/Basking_in_reflected_glory_Three_football_field_studies"><em>We</em> won</a>,” they say—fans share in the success. A <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1993-11716-001">very widely cited study</a> from 1992 found that this reflected glory increases fans’ self-esteem: It leads them to rate themselves as better at playing darts, solving anagrams, and even <a href="http://sci-hub.cc/10.1037/0022-3514.63.5.724">getting dates with attractive members of the opposite sex</a>. (Given that this paper was published during an age of <a href="https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem-proved-esp-is-real-showed-science-is-broken.html">freewheeling, p-hacking</a> social psychology, the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/05/science_is_broken_how_much_should_we_fix_it.html">usual skepticism</a> should be applied.) Meanwhile, when the home team loses, fans will try to dissociate themselves from the loss, by “cutting off reflected failure,” or “<a href="https://www.units.miamioh.edu/psybersite/fans/bc.shtml">CORFing</a>.” Now, in describing the outcome of game, the fan might say, “<em>They</em> lost.”</p>
<p>These bedrock concepts—BIRGing and CORFing—don’t map cleanly onto fantasy sports. When a fantasy owner wins, her glory isn’t merely “reflected”; it’s also earned, in a way, by the drafting and roster management decisions she’s made. And if she loses, she can’t so easily cut off from the failure of her players, because she’s the one who chose to start those players.</p>
<p>That’s why Dwyer told me he believes the highs and lows of fantasy fandom might be more extreme and more intense, on average, than the highs and lows of traditional fandom. When you control your roster—when you’re personally connected to a set of players that only you possess—then winning and losing take on more significance. And since fantasy games are a social activity, whatever success or failure you might have could well be amplified by its visibility to your fellow players, who are often friends or family.</p>
<p>I’m not so sure I buy that. I’ve played fantasy sports, off and on, for years, and when I think of the <a href="http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-york-giants/0ap2000000146973/Super-Bowl-XLII-David-Tyree-s-helmet-catch">most exciting victories</a> and the <a href="http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-cant-miss-plays/0ap3000000467461/Super-Bowl-XLIX-Malcolm-Butler-s-game-saving-interception">most crushing losses</a> I’ve ever experienced as a sports fan, exactly zero of them have involved my fantasy team. For me, the reflected glories of the Giants and the poorly deflected failures of the Jets—yes, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/features/2011/nfl_2011/week_16/cheering_for_the_giants_and_the_jets_confessions_of_a_sports_bigamist.html">I am a sports bigamist</a>—have always been far more gripping than any outcome for my erstwhile FF squad (RIP, Huevos Rancheros). For me, the personal nature of fantasy football makes the feelings less intense, because there are no other fans with whom to share them. Yes, fantasy football is a social activity, but the emotions one feels at any given time are necessarily at odds with those of the other owners. If I celebrate, that means you’re dejected, and vice versa. No one ever has a reason to high-five.</p>
<p>The traditional fan may not have the fantasy player’s sense of ownership—he may not have bought his players at an auction—but he’s part of a community. He may only bask in reflected glory, but at least he doesn’t have to bask alone. If you’re a Giants fan, I can talk to you about the helmet-catch in Super Bowl XLII, and together we can sidle up once more and share in that amazing win. But <a href="http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/no_one_wants_to_hear_about_your_fantasy_football">no one else will ever want to hear about your fantasy team</a> no matter what you say or do, never in a million years.</p>
<p>Fantasy sports may be good for football in a business sense: They may increase consumption and boost reported levels of enthusiasm and excitement. They may provide an outlet for the fans of lowly teams that never win. But in the long run, I think fantasy could be changing how we <em>feel</em> about our fandom. When we divert greater portions of our time to custom leagues, we’re diversifying our portfolio of passions. We’re trading stock in one highly volatile investment—rooting for our favorite team—for an index fund of rooting interests from around the league. That means we’re investing in the NFL at large: a safer play, to be sure, with lower stakes and many more ways to stay engaged. But when it comes to sports, if you’re playing it safe, then what’s the point of playing at all?</p>Thu, 24 Aug 2017 09:50:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/does_fantasy_football_ruin_football_fandom.htmlDaniel Engber2017-08-24T09:50:00ZWhat happens when we stop caring whether our favorite teams win or lose.SportsDoes Fantasy Football Ruin Football Fandom?100170824001footballsportsscienceDaniel EngberSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/does_fantasy_football_ruin_football_fandom.htmlfalsefalsefalseDoes fantasy football ruin football fandom?What happens when we stop caring whether our favorite teams win or lose.Harry How/Getty ImagesIt’s clear who this guy’s rooting for.&nbsp;The Kyrie Irving Trade Changes Nothinghttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/the_kyrie_irving_to_boston_trade_changes_little.html
<p>After reportedly flirting about a trade for weeks, the two top teams in the NBA’s Eastern Conference have finally decided to dance. It’s a big dance. As first <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-cavs-celtics-seriously-discussing-deal-swap-kyrie-irving-isaiah-thomas-223024513.html">reported</a> by the Vertical’s Shams Charania (and <a href="https://twitter.com/celtics/status/900156123818455044">confirmed by </a>the Celtics), the Cleveland Cavaliers have agreed to send disgruntled superstar Kyrie Irving to the Boston Celtics. It’s a move of major consequence, meaning it will likely decide who gets to lose to the Warriors in next year’s finals.</p>
<p>The Celtics give up a lot in this trade. Boston General Manager Danny Ainge has recently been the prince of keeping his powder dry, stockpiling and sitting on draft picks for years. It was beginning to look as though he was preparing for a basketball apocalypse, packing away future first-rounders like canned ham and iodine pellets. But in Kyrie Irving, Ainge has finally found a prize he believes worthy of his sizable dowry: star point guard Isaiah Thomas, swingman Jae Crowder, Croatian prospect Ante Zizic, and the Brooklyn Nets’ 2018 first-round pick.</p>
<p>(Here’s a neat little tidbit: By trading Irving and Thomas, the Cavs and Celtics are swapping the first pick of the 2011 NBA draft with the very last pick. The world has changed much in six years.)</p>
<p>On the surface, one could argue that there’s a lot to like for both teams in this trade. The Celtics get a superstar point guard with playoff experience to pair with excellent small forward Gordon Hayward, who was acquired via free agency over the summer. The Cavs have rid themselves of a player who desperately wanted out of Cleveland, while earning in return an all-star in Thomas, a solid rotation player, a draft pick, and a European center who might turn out to be decent come President Barron Trump’s second term. Cleveland sets itself up for the future (albeit an uncertain one), and Boston gets better immediately.</p>
<p>There’s also a lot to dislike about the move. Boston is swapping a great offensive point guard who is a liability on defense for … a great offensive point guard who is a liability on defense. Celtics coach Brad Stevens’ game plan relies on crisp passing, a skill that isn’t exactly Kyrie’s forte. In fact, Irving’s Jupiter-like gravitational hold on the ball prompted 3.8 FPPG—frustrated pouts per game—from LeBron last season. (Thanks to Elias Sports Bureau for that stat.)</p>
<p>This is not to ignore Kyrie's considerable talents. He's a god-dang necromancer, and Boston will certainly be improved from last season. But&nbsp;anyone who watched them crumble against the Cavs in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals knows they were leagues away from leapfrogging LeBron. The additions of Hayward and Irving help matters, but considering that Boston had to give the Cavs key players in order to obtain their new point guard, this all seems like frantic sleight-of-hand, a trick where a lot of waving happens but the coin never moves from the magician’s palm.</p>
<p>So while this trade may not guarantee a Finals appearance for the Celtics, it does ensure plenty of pressure on Ainge if they miss out again next season. Celtics fans strive for relevance above all else, but swapping crowd-favorite Thomas, even for a bona fide superstar, will spark agita across the greater Boston area. His magical season last year cemented the diminutive scorer as a cult hero. (<em>He’s a fighter, just like Hub-native Mark Wahlberg in the classic film</em> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AEFXXZU/?tag=slatmaga-20">The Fighter</a><em>! He’s also a shooter, just like Hub-native Mark Wahlberg in the classic film</em> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AEBB86A/?tag=slatmaga-20">Shooter</a><em>!</em>)&nbsp;After the Celtics traded down in the 2017 draft to avoid picking point guard Markelle Fultz, it seemed as if the Boston front office had finally committed to the little player who could. How will Celtics fans react to the team unceremoniously tossing Thomas into the Charles for a guy who clearly doesn’t care about endearing himself to his fan base?</p>
<p>There’s also the elephant in the room, and that elephant just drained a three-pointer in your face. Nothing about this trade puts either team in a position to beat the Golden State Warriors in the finals next season. Sure, injuries and other unforeseen events could unseat the defending champs, but barring a cataclysmic turn of events, the balance of power in the NBA isn’t shifting any time soon. This trade may affect who represents the Eastern Conference in the 2018 Finals, but when it comes to that team’s chances in June, the Titanic is merely trading deck chairs with the Hindenburg.</p>Wed, 23 Aug 2017 03:29:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/the_kyrie_irving_to_boston_trade_changes_little.htmlNick Greene2017-08-23T03:29:00ZWhoever won this exchange still gets to lose to the Warriors.SportsKyrie Irving to Boston Is the Biggest Possible Trade That Won’t Change a Thing100170822017nbabasketballNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/the_kyrie_irving_to_boston_trade_changes_little.htmlfalsefalsefalseKyrie Irving to Boston is the biggest possible trade that won’t change a thing:Whoever won this trade still gets to lose to the Warriors.Getty ImagesSwitch the uniform to green, and the result will still be the same.The NBA Is One Big Banana Boathttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/kyrie_irving_lebron_james_and_the_nba_s_banana_boat.html
<p>The most recent viral Steph Curry video features nary a basketball. The footage was filmed at the wedding of Curry’s former Golden State teammate Harrison Barnes, and it&nbsp;shows the Warriors guard on the dance floor&nbsp;executing a spot-on impersonation of LeBron James’ post–head-shaving <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BVXfmnthljC/">workout video</a> (which&nbsp;James posted right after Curry and the Warriors knocked him out of the NBA Finals).&nbsp;To make this tasty morsel of hot goss even more delicious, Kyrie Irving can be seen standing next to Curry, and the Cavaliers star is absolutely&nbsp;<em>reveling</em> in the mockery of his teammate.</p>
<p>For lovers of NBA drama, this was like watching Neil Armstrong bounce down from the lunar module. Not since Shaquille O’Neal’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kS71y-cchs">Kobe, Tell Me How My Ass Tastes</a>” freestyle has there been such crystal-clear evidence of superstar teammate discord. Kyrie had just <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/kyrie_irving_s_trade_request_could_destroy_the_cavs_and_his_own_career_worth.html">requested a trade</a> away from Cleveland. LeBron&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/889863906566348800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbnation.com%2F2017%2F7%2F25%2F16025844%2Flebron-james-kyrie-irving-angry-mad-kick-his-ass-come-on-guys">tweeted</a> to deny reports that he wanted to “beat [Kyrie’s] ass.” Kyrie apparently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thescore.com/news/1338862">unfollowed</a> @kingjames on Instagram.</p>
<p>While this may all seem like frivolous high school drama, there’s good reason for fans to obsess over these cafeteria-table social dynamics.&nbsp;With&nbsp;modern NBA stars now having the power to eject themselves from one franchise and catapult into another, friendships have become the astral maps we use to navigate the league’s near future.&nbsp;We now sift through Instagram likes like frenzied Old West prospectors, searching for clues as to who’s friendly with whom.</p>
<p>When LeBron set off for Miami in 2010, he left Cleveland in part because he <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story/_/page/simmons%2F100708">wanted to play with his friends</a>. When Kevin Durant departed Oklahoma City for Golden State in 2016, he obliterated his friendship with Russell Westbrook—or maybe, heaven forbid, they were never really friends at all. And before it became public that <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/kyrie_irving_s_trade_request_could_destroy_the_cavs_and_his_own_career_worth.html">Irving wanted off the Cavaliers</a>, the point guard reportedly tried to <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2723058-kyrie-irving-trade-rumors-star-was-interested-in-bulls-before-jimmy-butler-move">provoke a trade</a> between the Bulls and Cavs so he could join his buddy Jimmy Butler in Chicago. Before that could happen, the Bulls traded Butler to the Timberwolves, and now Butler is in a position to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/report-jimmy-butler-karl-anthony-towns-recruiting-kyrie-irving-to-wolves/">lobby Minnesota’s front office to make a move for Irving</a>. From one perspective, these are multimillionaires deciding the futures of teams worth billions of dollars. From another, this is, “Can Kyrie come over and play?”</p>
<p>Cross-team friendships used to be a touchy subject. Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas were once so close that they kissed each other on the cheek before Game 1 of the 1988 Finals. (Had Twitter been around for that event, the ensuing memes would have been so beautiful and consequential that our finest museums would be fighting for the right to display them in their respective modern wings.)&nbsp;It was a rare public show of camaraderie, one that infuriated and disgusted Lakers coach Pat Riley. Riley pulled his star player aside and told him he had to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&amp;v=uvST-VkoTug">prove to his teammates that he wasn’t soft</a>. Early in Game 2, Magic dutifully shoved Isiah to the ground.</p>
<p>Their friendship began to fracture during that series, post-kiss. In 1991, after Magic announced he’d been diagnosed with HIV, the Lakers star caught wind that Thomas had allegedly been <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/page2/story/_/page/hill%2F091104/sportCat/nba">spreading rumors</a> around the NBA that he was gay. While league insiders knew all about this saga, it wasn’t made public until 2009, when Magic detailed the ups and downs of his relationship with Isiah in&nbsp;the book&nbsp;<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0547394586/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>When the Game Was Ours</em></a>.</p>
<p>Back then, concealing these kinds of personal dramas wasn’t that hard. Social media didn’t exist, and the papers mostly stuck to covering the games themselves. With our eyes focused between the lines, we mostly bought the illusion Riley and others were selling us—that every player on every team hated everyone who wore a different uniform. Michael Jordan went still further: He was such a fierce competitor that he wasn’t satisfied with merely being mean to opponents—he had to harangue and <a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/61933/landing-a-punch-on-michael-jordan">punch</a> his teammates as well.</p>
<p>Kobe Bryant, forever the Donovan to Jordan’s Bob Dylan, took this act to its extreme endpoint. Bryant, who once called Derek Fisher his “<a href="http://nba.nbcsports.com/2015/11/24/kobe-bryant-names-his-four-closest-teammates/">all-time favorite teammate</a>,” didn’t invite Fisher (or any of his other teammates) to his wedding. Kobe relished the fact that he had no friends on the Lakers or any other team. In the introduction to Caron Butler’s book, Bryant proudly wrote that Butler was one of only four players he so much as “got along with” during his decadeslong career. </p>
<p>The Mamba, though, is a modern-day exception. When Kevin Durant left Oklahoma City to join the Warriors, the scandal was that he’d broken up his partnership with Russell Westbrook via text. When Westbrook wore a photographer’s <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2016/11/3/13515760/russell-westbrooks-official-photographer-outfit-kevin-durant">neon press bib</a> before a game—a shot at Durant, who is a photography hobbyist—basketball Twitter came down with a gnarly case of the vapors. The two remained estranged until the 2017 All-Star Game, when both were selected to represent the Western Conference. The weekend was awkward and tense—they practiced on&nbsp;<a href="http://www.foxsports.com/nba/story/kevin-durant-russell-westbrook-all-star-practice-avoid-ignore-not-talking-video-021817">opposite sides of the gym</a>—but when it came time to ball, the two hooked up for a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc5ohXvYsJ4">sweet alley-oop</a>,&nbsp;which they followed with a friendly dap. It sent the crowd and the bench into a giddy frenzy, and it proved to be the only memorable thing from that exhibition game. According to a <a href="http://www.sportingnews.com/nba/news/kevin-durant-russell-westbrook-friendship-area-21-kendrick-perkins-video/1u0upqmtqyzcj1fuitoa1w33vb">former teammate</a>, Westbrook and Durant are now buddies once more.</p>
<p>Had all this happened 20 years ago, long before the days when <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2016/10/19/13341418/russell-westbrooks-innocent-photo-of-cupcakes-turned-out-to-be-a-dig-at-kevin-durant">cupcake photos were sharable on social media</a>, fans would have had no idea about the Ballad of KD and Russ—perhaps we wouldn’t have even thought to care about it in the first place.&nbsp;Thanks to Instagram vacation photos and Snapchat updates from offseason weddings, we now have access into players’ daily lives, and that access has changed how we think about the NBA. And to be sure, star athletes are surely friendlier with each other now than they were in the ’80s and ’90s. Today’s NBA All-Stars came up playing with and against each other on elite Amateur Athletic Union teams. Stars also share agents, play together on Team USA, and go to China on joint trips to promote their shoe brands. The world gets pretty small, pretty fast when you’re one of the best 50 basketball players alive.</p>
<p>In the era of the superteam, these relationships are more important than ever.&nbsp;It seems like ages ago, but when LeBron went to South Beach, he received a bunch of criticism for wanting to play basketball with a bunch of dudes he enjoyed spending time with. Years of lone-wolf fetishization had programmed us to think this was a sin. (Ironically, one of the people who benefited most from LeBron’s dedication to his buddies was Pat Riley, president of the Heat.)&nbsp;But&nbsp;Miami’s success, coupled with the daily photographic evidence that NBA friendships are ubiquitous and normal, rewired our brains.&nbsp;We all chortled at the famous <a href="https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/bananaboat1.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;w=664&amp;h=441&amp;crop=1">2015 photo</a> of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Paul straddling a fruit-shaped watercraft while on vacation in the Bahamas. And then, two seconds after we stopped laughing about the banana boat, and we started doing the frenzied cap space calculus to figure out which teams could realistically sign all those guys at once. (This number-crunching is&nbsp;<a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/20161740/how-lebron-cp3-wade-melo-ride-together">still&nbsp;going on</a>, by the way.</p>
<p>The NBA is a small fraternity of very talented, very wealthy young men who share odd work hours and frenetic travel itineraries. Kudos to them for finding the time to spend time together, be they on oddly-proportioned-yet-seaworthy vessels or on dry land. While Charles Oakley may <a href="http://www.sportingnews.com/nba/news/charles-oakley-todays-nba-players-should-wear-dresses-video/1wrxqdd1bgf7819h0caxio80cl">choke me out</a> for saying so, these friendships add a human dimension to the sport. As anyone who has ever had a work friend can tell you, work friends make life better, and <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3051290/why-having-friends-at-work-is-so-important">studies</a> show they make you better at your job. Why shouldn’t NBA players get to enjoy the simple pleasure of playing on the same teams as their buddies?&nbsp;The “no friends” thing was always performative bullshit, anyway.&nbsp;</p>
<p>And now, if you’ll excuse me,&nbsp;I need to check out Harrison Barnes’ Instagram to see if Kyrie has liked any of his honeymoon photos.</p>Mon, 07 Aug 2017 09:55:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/kyrie_irving_lebron_james_and_the_nba_s_banana_boat.htmlNick Greene2017-08-07T09:55:00ZIt’s your duty as a basketball fan to obsess over whether players are friends.SportsIt’s Your Duty as an NBA Fan to Obsess Over Whether Players Are Friends100170807003sportsnbabasketballNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/kyrie_irving_lebron_james_and_the_nba_s_banana_boat.htmlfalsefalsefalseIt's your duty as an NBA fan to obsess over whether players are friends:The NBA is one big banana boat.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesKyrie Irving and LeBron James look pretty chummy here, but that was before Irving laughed at Steph Curry’s LeBron impression.Making the Perfect Sprinter More Perfecthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/how_usain_bolt_could_have_run_even_faster.html
<p>Usain Bolt is the only person to win both the 100 and 200 meters at three Olympic games. He is also the only person to do this at <em>two</em> Olympic games. Bolt has broken five individual outdoor track and field world records, three of them his own. He has run <a href="http://www.alltime-athletics.com/m_100ok.htm">three of the five fastest</a> 100-meter races and <a href="http://www.alltime-athletics.com/m_200ok.htm">four of the six fastest</a> 200-meter races in history. As Bolt gets set for the World Athletics Championships in London, the final meet of his beyond-illustrious career, we should be grateful for <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/fivering_circus/2016/08/usain_bolt_won_the_100_meter_dash_at_the_rio_olympics_where_does_it_rank.html">all the memorable moments</a> the world’s fastest man has given us. We should also be ingrates and ask: Could he have run faster?</p>
<p>Bolt has an uncanny knack for making the incredibly difficult look easy—like Muhammad Ali coming off the ropes, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDlZ_SXx5gA">like Westley fencing with his left hand</a>, like James Joyce writing <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1505297540/?tag=slatmaga-20">Ulysses</a></em> from Paris. It’s only natural to wonder, then, if he could have done more. His midrace celebrations, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/apr/11/usain-bolt-athletics-interview-records-100m">his apparent aversion for practice and affinity for parties</a>, his less than sensible diet—<a href="http://time.com/3912896/usain-bolt-chicken-mcnuggets-olympics/">he reportedly ate 1,000 Chicken McNuggets in 10 days during the Beijing Olympics</a>—all suggest history’s greatest sprinter might’ve had a little bit more in the tank.</p>
<p>After Bolt breezed to a 9.69 world record in the 100 meters at the 2008 Olympics, jogging and chest thumping across the finish line just days before his 22<sup>nd</sup> birthday, his coach Glen Mills <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-athletics-bolt-idUSLR7089520080827">made headlines</a> with his claim that Bolt would have hit 9.52, <em>at worst</em>, if he had just run through the line. <a href="http://sportsscientists.com/2008/09/usain-bolt-9-55s-yeah-right/">Scientists</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/sep/11/usainbolt.athletics">took on</a> <a href="https://sportsscientists.com/2008/08/beijing-2008-men-100m-race-analysis/">the task</a> of projecting the time that might have been, with most concluding that 9.52 was, at best, a slight exaggeration. Bolt, though, made that claim look less sensational when he tore through his own world records at the world championships in Berlin a year later, posting 9.58 in the 100 and 19.19 in the 200. Still, Bolt would never reach the 9.52 that Mills estimated, nor, for that matter, <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/usain-bolt-thinks-run-9-4-no-faster-132720146--oly.html">the 9.4 that he himself predicted</a>. He would never best those world records that he set in Berlin, when he was not yet 23 years old.</p>
<p>“We haven’t seen the 2009 Bolt since 2009,” says Peter Weyand, the director of the <a href="http://www.smu.edu/Simmons/AreasOfStudy/APW/APHM/LPL">Locomotor Performance Laboratory</a> at Southern Methodist University and a leading expert on the science of sprinting. When I asked Weyand about Bolt’s early peak, he told me that, although 22 or 23 is not an unusual age for a sprinter to top out, he would have predicted more after Bolt’s 2009 performances.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/20/sports/olympics/usain-bolt-stride-speed.html">recent research from Weyand’s lab</a> concluded that Bolt’s stride is abnormally asymmetric, Weyand says it’s unlikely this asymmetry held Bolt back in any way. He does point, however, to several aspects of Bolt’s form that are considered unorthodox and potentially suboptimal.</p>
<p>Weyand says the limiting factor of sprint speed is not turnover—how quickly a sprinter moves his or her legs—but the force, or impulse, the runner exerts into the track. We can think about impulse in two parts: the force generated when a sprinter’s legs are in the air and the force a sprinter applies by striking the track with his foot—a sort of hammer-and-nail relationship. Bolt’s footfalls—the hammers hitting the nails—are nearly perfect, but his windup—the way he swings those hammers—is not what physiologists see as ideal.</p>
<p>This video of a sub-10 second 100-meter runner, taken in Weyand’s SMU lab, provides an example of the traditionally accepted “ideal” form for a sprinter: low heels on the back side, high knees in the front, driving forward.</p>
<p>Weyand says this ideal technique is best embodied in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eai1DZVqIRM&amp;t=1m16s">Asafa Powell</a>, Bolt’s former Jamaican teammate and the sprint king dethroned by Bolt’s first 100-meter world record. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGh7SqVI_w8">Bolt’s technique</a>, by contrast, resembles that of a gazelle: heels clicking backward and up, nearly tapping his rear as his spikes point to the sky with every stride. And yet, inexplicably, <a href="http://blog.smu.edu/research/2010/01/21/human-running-speed-of-35-40-mph-may-be-biologically-possible/">each of Bolt’s steps manages to produce more than 1,000 pounds of force</a>, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/fivering_circus/2008/08/taking_sprinting_to_new_heights.html">allowing him to take advantage of his 6-foot-5 frame</a> and finish a 100-meter race in about three fewer strides than his competitors.</p>
<p>Weyand admits he doesn’t know whether Bolt’s unorthodox form slows him down. “He may suffer no ill consequence from not conforming to the working ideal,” he says, conveying an uncertainty that speaks to the many mysteries still facing the burgeoning field of sprint science. The challenge here, as the South African physiologist Ross Tucker told me, is that the field is still “so much in its infancy that we can’t say for certain that X is good and Y is not.” In a sport where every little thing matters, tiny adjustments can be dangerous. That said, it certainly seems possible that by adopting something closer to Powell’s technique, Bolt could generate more power during the time his legs are in the air, ultimately putting more separation between himself and his competitors.</p>
<p>Bolt has taken heat for his running style in the track community. Former 200- and 400-meter world record holder Michael Johnson has said Bolt could run <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/18730830">9.4 in the 100</a> and <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/797358/michael-johnson-backs-usain-bolt-to-smash-19-secs-in-200m/">break 19 in the 200</a> if he cleaned up his form. “Technically he is not the best. Technically he is a bit all over the place,” <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/othersports/article-2589773/Usain-Bolt-needs-improve-running-style-hes-going-faster-according-track-legend-Michael-Johnson.html">Johnson said in 2014</a>. Johnson <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JraQKxNKodY">elaborated to the BBC at the 2015 world championships</a>, critiquing Bolt’s upper body movement: “He doesn’t have lateral stability, so you will see a lot of rocking back and forth.” He also criticized Bolt’s starts, saying that the sprinter is “clunky” and “all over the place” when he comes out of the blocks.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that Bolt could’ve run faster without changing his form one bit. In 2012, <a href="https://www.wired.com/2012/04/usain-bolt-run-faster/">Cambridge physicist John D. Barrow determined that Bolt could run 9.45</a> in the 100 meters if he improved his reaction time at the gun, raced at altitude, and ran with the maximum allowed tailwind of 2 meters per second at his back. (It’s worth noting that Bolt ran both of his world record 200-meter races into <em>headwinds</em>.) Barrow added that he believes Bolt would have run faster if he’d seen major competition more often, saying, “If there’d been an Olympics every two years … you’d probably have a better world record.” All of Bolt’s world records, barring his first, have come in world championships or at the Olympics. Given more frequent appearances against top-level competition, Bolt would have had more incentive to ride the momentum of his peak 2009 form. Barrow, a scientist and a major track fan, says it’s a little disappointing that Bolt didn’t make more of his enormous potential. Mapping the arc of the sprinter’s career in retrospect, he says, “It really does look like a very sharp rise and then a gradual fall off.”</p>
<p>There are those, however, who theorize that Bolt’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/olympics/2016/08/06/rio-2016-olympics-usain-bolt-misses-the-opening-ceremony-because/">self-described laissez-faire attitude</a> may be one of his greatest assets. Robert Johnson, a co-founder of the running site LetsRun.com, is one of them. Johnson points to Bolt’s training partner Yohan Blake, <a href="http://www.letsrun.com/news/2016/06/rebirth-yohan-blake/">whom Bolt nicknamed the “Beast” for his preternatural work ethic</a>. Blake has been indisputably brilliant at points in his career—he’s second only to Bolt on the all-time 100 and 200 record boards—but has also been plagued by injury. Meanwhile, Bolt’s relatively lax approach, especially when paired with his coach’s (and his own) insatiable expectations, might have resulted in an ideal workload for the Jamaican champion to stay both fast and healthy.</p>
<p>David Epstein, whose book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/161723012X/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>The Sports Gene</em></a> examines the genetic basis for Jamaican dominance in sprinting, believes it’s more likely than not that Bolt came close to maximizing his potential. “I don’t think he likes to train as much as the next guy, but I think that’s really good,” said Epstein, noting that athletes with Bolt’s explosive power run the risk of injury by pushing themselves during repeated intense workouts. Bolt’s periods of rest and his relatively light racing schedule may have been optimal for a man of his talents. Epstein described a little-known aspect of muscle physiology known as <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=bengt+saltin+muscle+overshoot&amp;oq=bengt+saltin+muscle+overshoot&amp;gs_l=psy-ab.3...47968.5468862.0.5469194.56.52.1.0.0.0.300.5041.23j16j4j1.44.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..11.40.4492...0j35i39k1j0i67k1j0i20k1j0i22i30k1j0i19k1j33i22i29i30k1j33i21k1.1r_F7YMZoQA">an “overshoot” phenomenon</a> that he believes Bolt and Mills have used to their advantage. During intense training, a sprinter’s Type II (fast-twitch) muscle fibers can be temporarily impaired only to bounce back even stronger after a stint of rest. “When you stop doing your most intense and explosive training, there’s a delay—and then you’ll briefly be more explosive than you would ever be again,” Epstein said. If Bolt and his team have calibrated this phenomenon in the way Epstein claims, they may have found a way to exploit Bolt’s rest to catapult him even further ahead of the pack. “He seems to me to be a better peaker than any sprinter who’s ever lived,” Epstein told me.</p>
<p>At age 30—he’ll turn 31 later this month—Bolt’s best days are doubtless behind him. It is a testament to the sprint king’s dominance that his 100-meter and 200-meter times look likely to stand for years to come. Bolt left little reason for suspense over the course of his career. Most of his races looked the same: providing a slight flicker of doubt in the brief seconds after the gun, doubts that washed away quickly as Bolt separated, galloping off on his own, all the while smiling and making it look easy. Since 2008, he’s pretty much been competing with himself. The truth is, we’ll never know how fast he might have gone on a perfect day with the perfect start and the perfect stride.</p>Fri, 04 Aug 2017 20:57:44 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/how_usain_bolt_could_have_run_even_faster.htmlAdam Willis2017-08-04T20:57:44ZHow Usain Bolt could have run even faster.SportsHow Usain Bolt Could Have Run Even Faster100170804014sportsAdam WillisSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/how_usain_bolt_could_have_run_even_faster.htmlfalsefalsefalseHow Usain Bolt could have run even faster:Making the perfect sprinter more perfect.Milan Kammermayer/AFP/Getty ImagesUsain Bolt competes during the IAAF World Challenge Zlata Tretra (Golden Spike) athletics tournament in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on June 28.Big Money, Pretty Big Starhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/will_neymar_ever_overtake_messi_and_ronaldo_as_the_world_s_greatest_soccer.html
<p>After weeks of rumors, <a href="http://www.espnfc.com/blog/marcottis-musings/62/post/3171692/what-neymar-world-record-move-means-for-barcelona-psg-uefa-ffp-more">Paris Saint-Germain has handed over $263 million</a> to buy out Neymar’s contract with Barcelona. The move is the biggest shake-up to the soccer firmament since Cristiano Ronaldo moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid in 2009. The purchase of the popular, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2016/dec/20/the-100-best-footballers-in-the-world-2016-interactive">if not unanimous</a>, pick for the third-best player in the world is a massive, and massively expensive, statement of intent from PSG and leaves an equally huge hole in Barcelona’s lineup.</p>
<p>It’s safe to say the Spanish team was not anticipating this, not with the buyout clause in the 25-year-old Brazilian’s latest contract set so high. For many young players, such a clause, which states the amount of money the player or his buyer will have to pay to cancel the current deal, is an incentive designed to ensure upward mobility. The club is promising that if the player gets, say, $50-million good, then he can leave for whoever values him that highly.</p>
<p>For a superstar like Neymar, such clauses have traditionally been more of an ego-stroking device. Ronaldo’s is reportedly—and reportedly may be the key word here—$1.5 billion. To Barcelona, Neymar’s 222 million euro transfer fee was more a symbol of his astronomical value than the result of an exact appraisal. Whoever was crazy enough to pay this figure—more than double the previous world-record transfer fee—would have to convince Neymar he would be happier playing in something other than the most powerful front line in the sport along with Lionel Messi and Luis Su&aacute;rez.</p>
<p>But if you build a $263 million wall, eventually someone will come along with a $264 million ladder. PSG’s owner, Oryx Qatar Sports Investments, has spent around $800 million on transfer fees alone since taking over the club in 2011. That money turned the French Ligue 1 into the team’s personal fiefdom, at least before an upstart Monaco team pipped them to the title this past year. So far, though, the ultimate goal of a Champions League title has eluded them.</p>
<p>When Neymar’s wages and various incentives and bonuses are added in, the Qataris are going to end up shelling out something north of half a billion dollars on a single player. How can that possibly be worth it?</p>
<p>PSG’s owners aren’t paying all that cash for a new attacking centerpiece or even for the world’s third-best player. They believe Neymar will soon become the best and most marketable player in the world and that they will recoup significant value if he does so while wearing a PSG jersey.</p>
<p>Barcelona and Real Madrid have been the two biggest clubs in the world for the last decade, largely because Messi and Ronaldo have played for them. Unfortunately for PSG and their new star, Messi and Ronaldo still play for Barcelona and Madrid. If they are starting to slow down, then the rest of the field, Neymar included, still has a lot of catching up to do.</p>
<p>What is clear is that Neymar wasn’t gaining enough ground at Barcelona. The hope when he signed in 2013 was that he would prove a successor to Messi. Despite scoring a remarkable 106 goals in 186 games, he ended up as more of a sidekick. <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/40804584">If reports out of Spain are to be believed</a>, for Neymar the move was as much about trying to escape Messi’s shadow as it was about the money.</p>
<p>That assumes that playing with Messi (and Suarez et al.) was doing more to hold Neymar back than it was helping him. Even at its peak, the <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/barcelona-msn-messi-suarez-neymar--9077188">MSN axis</a> felt a bit like a cobbled-together supergroup—soccer’s own Traveling Wilburys. But Messi and Suarez are hardly ball hogs. Between them they diverted a lot more defensive attention than PSG’s Edinson Cavani will.</p>
<p>At the same time, Ligue 1 is more forgiving than Spain’s La Liga, and the Brazilian has consistently produced while at the center of his national team. So how many goals will Neymar have to score to become the best player in the world? What kinds of highlights will he have to produce? What if he takes the reins in Paris only to find that’s still not enough to challenge the duopoly of Messi and Ronaldo?</p>
<p>Neymar has hardly been the only victim of the attention paid to the best two players in the world. For the past decade, the global game has been played in the shadow of their rivalry. Messi will go down as the best player in history, despite what those who are skipping the rest of this article to leave a comment about him never winning a World Cup will say. Ronaldo may be remembered as the greatest pure goal scorer the game has ever seen.</p>
<p>The pair has finished 1-2 in some order in the voting for all but one<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballon_d%27Or"> Ballon d’Or</a> since 2008. (Ronaldo finished sixth in the contest for the 2010 trophy, which was won by Messi.) The last back-to-back winner other than those two was Marco van Basten in 1988 and 1989, before South American players were even eligible for the award. Only a handful of other players have made the top three twice in a row in the last three decades. Meanwhile,&nbsp;both Messi and Ronaldo scored more goals last year than they did in the first seasons in which they won the award.</p>
<p>This kind of extended dominance is unprecedented in soccer, though not in our broader sporting landscape, which is littered with athletes like LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Serena Williams who ascended to the top of their games early in their 20s and then stayed there for a decade or longer. Modern sports science has turned athletes’ peaks into plateaus. Some Next Big Things can spend their entire careers trying to push beyond the Big Things of the present.</p>
<p>While Father Time may be undefeated, so far he’s made little headway on the two men Neymar is looking to surpass. With <a href="http://i2.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article8483725.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Lionel-Messi-blonde-hair.jpg">his tattoos, beard, and occasional dye job</a>, the 30-year-old Messi still looks like a teenager pretending at adulthood. The immutable Ronaldo, 32, gets a little more Stepford Wife–like every year. How old will Neymar be when he is finally, definitively better than both of them? More importantly, who will be waiting in the wings trying to surpass him when that happens?</p>
<p>Barcelona and Real Madrid are both trying to recruit Monaco’s 18-year-old striker Kylian Mbapp&eacute;. Borussia Dortmund’s 20-year-old Ousmane Demb&eacute;l&eacute; has his pick of suitors. Manchester City’s 20-year-old Brazilian Gabriel Jesus scored seven goals in 10 games in the Premier League before getting hurt and has five in seven appearances for Brazil. By the time the sport needs a new global face, one of these options may be a more attractive candidate, not least because he—like Messi and Ronaldo circa 2008—will likely be around for another decade and a half.</p>
<p>If Neymar’s going to claim his place as the sport’s biggest star, or even turn the current diarchy into a triumvirate, he can’t wait for Messi or Ronaldo to bow out. He’s going to have to push past them starting now, in his first season with PSG. Otherwise, the Age of Neymar may be over before it begins. He’ll be part of soccer’s Lost Generation, adrift in Paris with his money and his broken dreams.</p>Fri, 04 Aug 2017 15:06:46 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/will_neymar_ever_overtake_messi_and_ronaldo_as_the_world_s_greatest_soccer.htmlEric Betts2017-08-04T15:06:46ZParis Saint-Germain is paying Neymar to be the best soccer player in the world. But will he ever surpass Messi and Ronaldo?SportsWill Neymar Ever Overtake Messi and Ronaldo as the World’s Greatest Soccer Player?100170804005sportssoccerEric BettsSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/08/will_neymar_ever_overtake_messi_and_ronaldo_as_the_world_s_greatest_soccer.htmlfalsefalsefalseWill Neymar ever overtake Messi and Ronaldo as the world’s greatest soccer player?Paris Saint-Germain is betting big on the 25-year-old Brazilian. Will the club’s half-billion–dollar investment pay off?Philipp Schmidli/Getty ImagesFIFA Ballon d’Or nominees Neymar da Silva Santos J&uacute;nior, Lionel Messi, and Cristiano Ronaldo on Jan. 11, 2016, in Zurich, Switzerland.Inflategatehttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/the_press_is_overhyping_the_latest_study_on_cte_in_the_nfl.html
<p>News <a href="https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/889865923670278144">alerts</a> flashed across the internet on Tuesday afternoon, touting the results of a <a href="https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/889866728754360321">major new study</a> of football’s effects on the brain. Reports described it as the “<a href="https://twitter.com/DailyMail/status/889871740251365376">biggest ever</a>” of its kind: A team of researchers based at Boston University and led by neuropathologist Ann McKee had examined a large databank of neural specimens from former NFL athletes and found that <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/07/25/539198429/study-cte-found-in-nearly-all-donated-nfl-player-brains?utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=npr&amp;utm_term=nprnews&amp;utm_content=20170725">nearly all</a> of them—110 out of 111, or 99 percent—showed signs of the degenerative brain condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. This “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nfl-cte-99-percent_us_5977621ce4b0e201d5786da9?kjdf&amp;ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009">startlingly high percentage</a>” has since made headlines in nearly every major publication; as of the end of Wednesday it was the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/trending/">most-emailed</a> story on the <em>New York Times </em>website. “How many more dead athletes do we need before we stop quibbling about the toll of head trauma?” asked a columnist in <em>USA Today</em>. “100? 200? <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2017/07/25/how-many-more-dead-athletes-before-we-address-cte/509670001/">Because we’re already there</a>.”</p>
<p>The latest CTE results, however, aren’t nearly as dramatic as the headlines would lead you to believe. The new paper from McKee et al. offers up some valuable information, but it doesn’t show that nearly every NFL player has a damaged brain. In truth, we’re no better informed today than we were last week when it comes to the most important and elusive questions about the athletes’ brain disease: How many football players suffer from CTE pathology, and to what extent do changes to their neural tissue lead to symptoms while they’re still alive?</p>
<p>The brains assessed in the Boston University study were not randomly selected. Rather, they were donated by family members of the deceased or referred by medical examiners, who had reason to suspect that researchers might find evidence of damage. In other words, the findings from these brains describe at best an upper bound for the prevalence of CTE. It’s the rate we’d expect to find if every player in the NFL were just as plagued by mental problems as the men whose brains were sent to McKee.</p>
<p>What might be the corresponding lower bound? As the <em>New York Times</em> points out, the BU sample represents about one-tenth of the former NFL players who’ve died since the study began. If we assume that every other player in that group had a healthy brain, the total prevalence for CTE would be in the vicinity of 9 percent. From this we can conclude that the true rate of the disease is somewhere between 9 and 99 percent.</p>
<p>Even this vague assertion isn’t news. There’s no way to know the prevalence of CTE without a means of testing living players, McKee told <em>Frontline</em> in 2013, explaining that “an autopsy series is terribly biased.” By that point, she’d looked at the brains of 35 former professional football players and found that 34 of them—<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3624697/">97 percent</a>—showed signs of CTE. Given those results, she guessed that the lower bound for CTE’s prevalence would be “<a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sports/league-of-denial/the-frontline-interview-ann-mckee/">about 10 percent</a>.”</p>
<p>McKee’s findings have been remarkably consistent since she began her work, even as her specimen bank grew from just a handful of former players’ brains to the large collection she has today. Meanwhile, the press coverage has been equally unchanging. In 2011, <em>USA Today</em> reported that McKee had found CTE in the brains of 13 of 14 former NFL players, or <a href="https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/topstories/2011-03-03-2692396356_x.htm">93 percent</a>; CNN followed two months later, citing 14 out of 15, which also rounds to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/02/duerson.brain.exam.results/index.html">93 percent</a>. A year after, a <em>Grantland</em> profile of “The Woman Who Would Save Football” reported that McKee had looked at tissue from 19 former players and diagnosed 18 with CTE, a rate of <a href="http://grantland.com/features/neuropathologist-dr-ann-mckee-accused-killing-football-be-sport-only-hope/">95 percent</a>. In September 2014, McKee earned a huge amount of coverage for having uncovered signs of CTE in the brains of 76 out of 79 former players, or <a href="http://time.com/3450674/nfl-brain-disease/">96 percent</a>. In September 2015, another round of stories reported on McKee’s “new study” finding CTE in 87 of 91 former players, or <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/study-956-percent-of-deceased-nfl-players-tested-positive-for-cte/">95.6 percent</a>. And now we have the latest news, that there is evidence of CTE in 110 out of 111 former players, or <a href="http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2645104">99 percent</a>.</p>
<p>It’s important that this upper bound for prevalence hasn’t budged even as scores of brains have been added to the database. It means that McKee and her colleagues’ early work can’t have been a fluke and that CTE really must be close to universal in the special set of cases that they study, i.e., the ones in which we already know it’s likely to be present. But aside from this insight, these periodic updates on the BU research program give us very little new information. The latest study only shows that McKee et al. have lightly tweaked their criteria for diagnosis and perhaps their rules for which samples to include in their analysis. (Otherwise how would it make sense that the number of nondiseased brains started at one, grew to four in subsequent research, and then shrank back down to one this week?)</p>
<p>Let’s imagine that the true prevalence of CTE in the NFL lies in the middle of the 9-to-99-percent range that McKee has described. We’ll assume that just more than half of all the league’s retirees—54 percent—harbor some degree of football-related damage to their brains. What would that mean in practice?</p>
<p>The BU team provides a long list of <a href="http://jamanetwork.com/data/Journals/JAMA/936389/joi170072t3.png">potential consequences of having CTE</a>: dementia; drug and alcohol abuse; cognitive symptoms, such as memory loss and attention deficit; motor-control issues; and various behavioral disorders such as depression, anxiety, violence, and suicidality. Using online surveys and telephone interviews with people who were close to the deceased, the BU team found these symptoms were more or less ubiquitous. According to their paper, cognitive symptoms turned up in 93 percent of the football players they identified as having CTE while behavioral symptoms were present in 91 percent and dementia in 72 percent.</p>
<p>Given these numbers, along with the assumption above that a little more than half of all NFL retirees have CTE, we might expect to find cognitive and behavioral symptoms in about half the total player population and signs of dementia in roughly 40 percent. That is to say, we’d be looking at a crisis of obvious and staggering proportions.</p>
<p>But despite <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/05/junior_seau_s_suicide_are_concussions_responsible_.html">ample and alarmist</a> reporting on this topic, a crisis of that magnitude does not appear to be in progress. According to a <a href="http://ns.umich.edu/Releases/2009/Sep09/FinalReport.pdf">survey of roughly 1,000 former players</a>, conducted at the University of Michigan in 2008, NFL retirees are not as a group overwhelmed by sadness, violent outbursts, or suicidal thoughts. The Michigan researchers found that about 17 percent of the younger retirees had been diagnosed as having depression and that their reports of depressive symptoms are just “slightly higher” than those of men in the general population. (This depression gap <a href="https://www.si.com/vault/2013/01/21/106273507/conclusions-too-early">narrows as the former players age</a>.) Meanwhile, the retirees are “much less likely” to report having episodes of explosive anger than other men, and we know from a different study that their risk of suicide is <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/p0510-nfl-suicide-risk.html">less than half</a> of what one would expect to see in age-matched controls.</p>
<p>The Michigan researchers did find major cause for worry: Former players showed inflated rates of dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other memory-related diseases. The prevalence of these conditions among the younger men is 12 times higher than it is in the general population; among the older men, the rate is three times higher. Those are crisis numbers, clearly, but they aren’t close to what we’d expect to see—a 40 percent incidence of dementia—based on our extrapolation of the results from McKee’s study. In the Michigan survey, the overall prevalence of memory-related conditions among NFL retirees, while way higher than in the general population, is still pretty low in absolute terms: just 1.9 percent for the younger retirees and 6.1 percent for the older ones.</p>
<p>If it’s really true that more than half of NFL retirees have CTE, and if it’s really true that more than 90 percent of men with that condition have symptoms while they’re still alive, then the numbers don’t add up. This suggests either that CTE is not as widespread as we thought or that the symptoms of CTE are not as severe as we’ve imagined, or both. At the very least, if we take the study’s headline-making finding at face value—that 99 percent of football players’ brains are likely to bear the signs of CTE—then we must acknowledge that, in the vast majority of cases, the presence of those neurofibrillary tangles will have no effect on those players’ well-being.</p>
<p>That would be consistent with the findings from a different study to which McKee contributed, published in 2015 (and ignored by journalists), in which she checked for CTE in a large sample of brains from people who’d suffered from neurodegenerative disorders. Researchers found evidence of CTE only in the brains of those with a history of playing contact sports, with a prevalence of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4655127/">32 percent</a>. More to the point, the presence (or absence) of CTE in this sample seemed to have no bearing on the patients’ symptoms while they were alive. Either way, they had <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4655127/table/T2/">equivalent rates</a> of substance abuse, the same age of onset for their symptoms, the same duration of their symptoms, and the same age of death.</p>
<p>In the absence of more and better data, we have no good way of working through all the uncertainty around CTE. We know for sure there is a problem, but we haven’t yet defined its scope and implications. McKee et al. understand this very well. Indeed, they aren’t claiming otherwise in their latest paper. “Estimates of prevalence cannot be concluded or implied from this sample,” they write, adding that the latest data don’t allow for any “estimation of the risk of participation in football and neuropathological outcomes.” Given how their work continues to be covered, it’s clear this message isn’t getting through.</p>Wed, 26 Jul 2017 22:21:33 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/the_press_is_overhyping_the_latest_study_on_cte_in_the_nfl.htmlDaniel Engber2017-07-26T22:21:33ZDon’t believe the pumped-up headlines. The latest study on CTE in the NFL doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.SportsThe Press Is Overhyping the Latest Study on CTE in the NFL100170726012sportsnflfootballDaniel EngberSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/the_press_is_overhyping_the_latest_study_on_cte_in_the_nfl.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe press is overhyping the latest study on CTE in the NFL:Don’t believe the pumped-up headlines.Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesWe know CTE is a problem in the NFL, but we still don’t know how big of one.Aaron Judge Could Be the Face of Baseballhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/aaron_judge_could_be_the_face_of_baseball_but_he_s_not_the_hero_the_sport.html
<p>A couple months ago, Jimmy Fallon did a segment with New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge. The towering right fielder is set up at a desk in Manhattan’s Bryant Park, where he interviews Yankees fans about … Aaron Judge. The fans don’t get that it’s him, until they do, at which point there are laughs and hugs and affirmations. A fan puts him in good company: “Two gaps in New York, you and [Michael] Strahan,” he says, comparing Judge’s toothy smile to that of the ex-Giants defensive end and current daytime TV host.</p>
<p>The Fallon spot puts Judge in good company—<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0D8V0dCbf8">Matt Harvey</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b9rOji_PWY">Robinson Can&oacute;</a>, New York baseball heroes in their time, both participated in similar skits. The joke works because fans can’t recognize their idols out of context. It’s also funny because not even guys who <a href="http://www.12up.com/posts/5067564-ny-tabloids-dropped-some-interesting-headlines-for-aaron-judge-s-grand-slam">grace the New York tabloids</a> a few dozen times a summer get recognized on the street, because they play baseball.</p>
<p>Two weeks after that Fallon video made the rounds, ESPN released its “<a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/worldfame100/espn-world-fame-100-top-ranking-athletes">World Fame 100</a>,” a ranking of the biggest names in sports. There were golfers, a table tennis player, and a whole lot of soccer players. Lin Dan, the Chinese badminton star and “bad-boy sex symbol” known as “Super Dan,” <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/worldfame100/espn-world-fame-100-top-ranking-athletes#R88__LinDan">came in at 88</a>. There were no baseball players. Among American sports fans, the results look only slightly better for the national pastime: <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/19074938/where-all-mlb-superstars-gone">ESPN’s poll of our top 50 favorite athletes</a> included just three baseball players, Derek Jeter, Pete Rose, and Babe Ruth. One is retired. One was banned from the sport for life. One had been dead for almost 70 years.</p>
<p><strong><em>Want to listen to this article out loud? Hear it on </em></strong><a href="http://slate.com/voice"><strong><em>Slate Voice</em></strong></a><strong><em>.</em></strong></p>
<p>Into this void stomps a 25-year-old rookie who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/sports/baseball/aaron-judge-home-run-derby.html?_r=0">stands 6-foot-7 and weighs 282 pounds</a>, and leads the majors with 32 home runs, including one this weekend that <a href="http://m.mlb.com/video/v1634019383/nyysea-judge-sends-a-threerun-homer-into-orbit">nearly left Seattle’s Safeco Field</a>. The day of the Fallon interview, Judge was set to <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/05/09/aaron-judge-new-york-yankees">appear on the cover of <em>Sports Illustrated</em></a>. In June, he was the American League player of the month. A few weeks ago, he swatted 47 home runs to <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/241596010/aaron-judge-wins-2017-home-run-derby/">win baseball’s Home Run Derby</a>. Four of them traveled more than 500 feet, and <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2017/7/10/15950500/aaron-judge-hit-roof-first-round-home-run-derby">one of them hit the roof of Marlins Park</a>. No one had ever done that before, and the officials weren’t sure what to do. They didn’t count it, so Judge hit another. No problem.</p>
<p>It was a national audition for the Yankees phenom, and he passed. The verdict: This guy might just be the <em>face of baseball</em>—a Wheaties-ready mug that could appear in network ads without an introduction, that <em>will </em>get recognized on the street, that might revive flagging interest in baseball among young Americans and give the sport a much-needed household name.</p>
<p>“He’s must-watch TV,” said Nationals right fielder Bryce Harper. “Next coming of Derek Jeter,” said Rays ace Chris Archer. <em>SI</em>’s Gabriel Baumgaertner <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/07/11/aaron-judge-home-run-derby-all-star-game?utm_campaign=si-mlb&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;xid=socialflow_twitter_si">declared</a> Judge superior to both Harper (“inconsistent,” “gruff”) and consensus best-player-in-baseball Mike Trout (“bland,” “forgettable”). On the eve of the All-Star Game, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2017/07/11/all-star-game-face-of-baseball-bryce-harper-mike-trout-aaron-judge/466878001/">said</a> Judge was indeed “the kind of player that can become the face of baseball.”</p>
<p>No doubt he can. But if this Paul Bunyan of the Bronx is the hero baseball wants, he may not be the one it needs.</p>
<p>It’s easy to see why Judge, in less than four months, appears to have eclipsed what Trout has done in five MVP-caliber seasons. Trout can hit for power, get on base, run, and field as well as anyone in the game, but that well-roundedness doesn’t pop out in a highlight reel like Judge’s roof-scraping, <a href="http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2017/05/02/227864070/aaron-judges-batting-practice-homer-destroyed-a-new-tv-at-yankee-stadium">TV screen–smashing</a> power.</p>
<p>Like all exceptional athletes, Judge leaves fans certain they could not possibly do what he does. He makes adults feel like children, even the ones he plays against. “It’s just that he’s so big,” Red Sox star Mookie Betts said recently. “For a human to get like that is pretty amazing to me.” The Rockies’ Charlie Blackmon said Judge was “a contact hitter trapped in an ogre’s body.” His stats will regress from their current Ruth-ian levels, but his size ensures he’ll hit with awe-inspiring power so long as he stays healthy.</p>
<p>But Judge would be a surprising choice to be the face of a sport that’s perennially diagnosed as suffering from a lack of personality. This is the primary complaint about Trout, who Mike Schur <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/why_doesn_t_anyone_care_about_mike_trout.html">described</a> thusly in a profile for <strong><em>Slate </em></strong>last year:</p>
<blockquote>
There are no famous stories about wild behavior, no crazy nights at whatever the 2016 equivalent of the Copacabana is. Trout’s main off-field passion seems to be … the weather. He loves weather and weather reports, even
<a href="http://screengrabber.deadspin.com/weather-geek-mike-trout-joins-jim-cantore-to-report-on-1754703823">appearing on the Weather Channel</a> a few times, to guest-announce the weather. That’s right. His true passion is the thing we all talk about to fill awkward silences on elevators.
</blockquote>
<p>Judge is less eccentric. At the time of his <em>SI</em> cover shoot, he was living out of a suitcase in a Times Square hotel, wary of renting an apartment lest he be sent back to Scranton. His favorite Times Square activity? Getting frozen yogurt at midnight. He <a href="https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/05/09/aaron-judge-new-york-yankees">claimed</a> to have not yet bellied up to a bar in New York City. Lana Berry calls Judge “the biggest baseball boy,” a lovable, small-town kid with extraordinary skills. That sounds a little like … Mike Trout.</p>
<p>Not every baseball star is a snooze. There’s Blue Jays slugger Jos&eacute; Bautista, whose <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UdsVO7HaJg">dramatic bat flip</a> in the 2015 playoffs prompted so much introspection about the sport’s supposed code of honor. There’s Mets ace Noah “Thor” Syndergaard, the obstinate fireballer who, like Harvey before him, has embraced the idea that a pitcher can be a superhero. (Unfortunately for Mets fans, Thor and his hammer have spent much of the year on the disabled list.) And there’s Harper, the mound-charging, hair-whipping Nationals outfielder who, with “<a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/8047918/washington-nationals-bryce-harper-clown-question-retort-takes-off">That’s a clown question, bro</a>,” produced the game’s most memorable one-liner since Pedro Mart&iacute;nez said the Yankees were his daddy.</p>
<p>The All-Star Game that thrust Judge into the spotlight was supposed to belong to Jos&eacute; Fern&aacute;ndez, the Miami Marlins pitcher who died in a boating accident last September. No doubt the two young ballplayers would have gotten on well. Fern&aacute;ndez was famously fun and outgoing; Judge is universally liked. But in the battle for the soul of baseball, they represent two very different philosophies.</p>
<p>Fern&aacute;ndez played with exuberance and barely contained delight. He performed, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/marlins_pitcher_jose_fernandez_was_the_future_of_baseball.html">as my colleague Josh Levin wrote after his death</a>, “with a kind of generosity of spirit that’s rare at any level of any sport.” His colleagues saw him as emblematic of a new style in baseball, part of a crop of magnetic players (many of them Latino) who’d injected a little fire into the game’s worn traditions.</p>
<p>Judge isn’t in that cadre. He’s incessantly invoked as a paragon of good sportsmanship and virtue. “The kid seems to have his head on his shoulders the right way,” former Yankees catcher John Flaherty <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/aaron-judge-drawing-derek-jeter-comparisons-article-1.3125876">said</a>. “He seems to say the right thing. It’s about team first, it’s not about him.” Nats fireballer Stephen Strasburg <a href="http://www.nj.com/yankees/index.ssf/2017/07/is_aaron_judge_next_yankees_next_captain_don_matti.html">echoes that</a>: “Judge has a good head on his shoulders and he plays the game the right way.” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/sports/baseball/aaron-judge-home-run-derby.html?_r=0">So does the Rays’ Archer</a>: “You can tell he’s very humble and keeps his nose clean.”</p>
<p>If fans like Judge, does it matter that he doesn’t toss his Louisville Slugger into the air like a cheerleader’s baton every third at-bat? I think it does. Yes, Judge is a physical revelation. But he doesn’t subvert our fundamental expectations about what a baseball player can be. He is the biggest, the strongest, and hits the ball the hardest. He is the quintessence of what we expect from a baseball player. And so far, nothing we don’t.</p>
<p>Twenty years ago, the most famous player in baseball was Ken Griffey Jr., the smooth-swinging, smiling kid from Seattle who wore his shirt untucked and his hat backward. It’s easy now to see that Junior was the epitome of class, but that is a testament to his influence. He, like Fern&aacute;ndez and Bautista, was <a href="http://articles.courant.com/1994-07-15/sports/9407150610_1_griffey-mariners-center-fielder-seattle-fans">accused</a> of disrespecting the game in his day. It was his charisma, as much as his play, that made him a star, and changed what stardom looked like in the national pastime.</p>
<p>Judge looks more like another young star from the Bronx whose imperturbable manner didn’t stop him from becoming the biggest star of <em>his </em>generation. While Derek Jeter dated supermodels and practically trademarked the jumping throw from shortstop, his enduring trait was his <a href="http://nypost.com/1999/08/08/short-tempers-on-yanks-jeter-ripped-by-curtis-after-seattle-base-brawl/">supreme levelheadedness</a>. It worked for him in part because he played in an era full of fallen heroes. Baseball needed a straight man—then.</p>
<p>Judge’s popularity (he had the <a href="http://nypost.com/2017/06/15/aaron-judges-jersey-is-the-hottest-selling-item-in-mlb/">best-selling jersey</a> in MLB even before his All-Star showcase) invites us to think we’ve been wrong—that baseball doesn’t <em>need</em> a hero with an edge, someone who flips bats like Bautista, applies a no-look tag like Javier B&aacute;ez, or drinks 40 beers on a plane like Wade Boggs. For the moment, the Yankees right fielder appears to have solved baseball’s personality problem with sheer bat speed.</p>
<p>After a while, though, even the most majestic home runs <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20105438/dig-long-ball-here-why-home-run-highlight-videos-worst">start to blend together</a>. Judge is young. We don’t know what lies ahead for him, or how he might play in October, when baseball is on national television in prime time. What we do know is that he’s a model ballplayer. In this era, baseball needs something—and someone—different, the kind of star who breaks the mold, not just the flat-screens in Yankee Stadium.</p>Tue, 25 Jul 2017 09:55:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/aaron_judge_could_be_the_face_of_baseball_but_he_s_not_the_hero_the_sport.htmlHenry Grabar2017-07-25T09:55:00ZBut he’s not the hero the sport needs right now.SportsAaron Judge Could Be the Face of Baseball, but He’s Not the Hero the Sport Needs Right Now100170725001sportsbaseballHenry GrabarSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/aaron_judge_could_be_the_face_of_baseball_but_he_s_not_the_hero_the_sport.htmlfalsefalsefalseAaron Judge could be the face of baseball, but he’s not the hero the sport needs right now:Yes, he’s a physical revelation. But the Yankees slugger doesn’t subvert our fundamental expectations about what a baseball player can be.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesAaron Judge of the New York Yankees bats against the National League during the MLB All-Star Game at Marlins Park on July 11 in Miami.Kyrie Irving Is a Mad Geniushttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/kyrie_irving_s_trade_request_could_destroy_the_cavs_and_his_own_career_worth.html
<p>Kyrie Irving is a man of remarkable talent. His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCONWdQ5SJ4">handles are nonpareil</a> and his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rccv4UylBW0">ability to finish at the rim</a> around, amongst, under, and betwixt defenders is breathtaking in the most literal sense—you gasp and hold the oxygen inside your lungs until you see the slow-motion replay or turn blue, whichever comes first. He’s part yo-yo champ, part contortionist, an offensive whiz kid who plays three-card Monte with a basketball. He also might be crazy because he’s decided he’s sick of playing with LeBron James.<a></a></p>
<p>As ESPN’s Brian Windhorst <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/20124505/kyrie-irving-seeking-trade-cleveland-cavaliers">reported&nbsp;Friday&nbsp;afternoon</a>—the NBA cares not for your Summer&nbsp;Friday—the Cleveland Cavaliers point guard has informed the team that he wants to be traded. Apparently, the 25-year-old Irving, who hit the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ8yCJgsF_4">shot to win the 2016 NBA Finals</a>, is unhappy playing second fiddle to the best player in the world.<a>*</a> He’s got his sights set on first fiddle, and he’s said to have dropped this fiddle-related news on the Cavaliers last week after&nbsp;the ink had dried on the league’s biggest offseason moves. According to Windhorst, James was “blindsided” and “is disappointed.” I, on the other hand, am ecstatic. For basketball fans who don’t live in Northeast Ohio, Irving’s trade demand has injected some much-needed insanity into a league that’s become all too predictable.</p>
<p>Irving is going to get a lot of flak for his request to be shipped out of Cleveland (and he <a href="https://twitter.com/MrHart__/status/888797058890682368">already has</a>). As a shoot-first point guard, he has never been accused of being unselfish, and as <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2697993-kyrie-irving-discusses-controversy-surrounding-his-flat-earth-comments">an outspoken flat Earther</a>, he isn’t exactly known for his judgment either. Nonetheless, Irving is making the right decision and not just because it gives pallid, sun-weary NBA junkies a reason to stay hooked on Twitter in July.</p>
<p>The Cavs have endured a miserable offseason, one that led Irving to say earlier this week that the team was “<a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2017/07/18/kyrie-irving-cleveland-cavaliers-lebron-james-rumors">in a very peculiar place</a>.” Since losing to the Golden State Warriors in the finals last month, Cleveland has re-signed Kyle Korver and brought in journeymen Jose Calderon and Jeff Green and Turkish power forward Cedi Osman. The Timberwolves, meanwhile, acquired all-star Jimmy Butler, while another perennial all-star, Paul George, went to the Oklahoma City Thunder. I’m sure Jeff Green is a nice guy, but I think Cleveland would’ve been better off with … not Jeff Green.</p>
<p>This is all Dan Gilbert’s fault. The Cavaliers owner, whose success in the NBA can be attributed entirely to the fact that Cleveland had the No. 1 pick the year LeBron James decided to turn pro, managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of competence earlier this summer when he <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2017/6/20/15835070/david-griffin-dan-gilbert-history-cavs-gm">refused to extend the contract</a> of well-liked general manager David Griffin. Gilbert then <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2017/7/6/15927918/chauncey-billups-lowball-cavs-president-david-griffin-dan-gilbert">low-balled the team’s top candidate</a> to succeed Griffin, leaving the Cavs to operate without a GM during the draft and the start of free agency. This is how you end up with Jeff Green instead of Jimmy Butler.</p>
<p>Despite their anemic summer, you could’ve penciled in the Kyrie-LeBron-Love Cavs to waltz through the Eastern Conference and to the finals—where they'd get flayed by the Warriors, naturally. Who knows how much Cleveland could have improved its team if its front office had shown a soup&ccedil;on of managerial proficiency? Why reward this haplessness with loyalty? LeBron honored his contact during his first stint with the Cavs and Gilbert <em>still</em> called him a “coward” and questioned his moral fiber in a <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=5365704">frothy missive</a> written in comic sans. If Kyrie Irving’s path to fulfillment leads to misery for Dan Gilbert, then all the better.</p>
<p>The boss’s awfulness isn’t the only reason it’s logical for Irving to start looking for one-way tickets out of town. James’ departure from Cleveland after his contract expires next year isn’t a sure thing, but—thanks in large part to Captain Comic Sans—it’s looking surer and surer by the day. Irving <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/11160663/kyrie-irving-cleveland-cavaliers-accepts-max-contract-extension">signed a five-year contract extension</a> with the Cavs in 2014, less than two weeks before <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2014/07/11/lebron-james-cleveland-cavaliers">James announced, “I’m Coming Home.”</a> Rather than wait to learn his team’s fate via the medium of <em>Sports Illustrated</em> as-told-to feature story—“LeBron James: I’m Coming to My Second Home, the One in Brentwood”—why not escape in advance of the franchise’s likely implosion? Sure, it might be courteous to wait for the man who carried you to a world championship. But would it be so bad to see civility get defenestrated in a league that has gotten exceedingly too chummy and polite?</p>
<p>And besides, there’s an expression regarding the finishing position of nice guys that feels appropriate here. Kyrie Irving is merely following in the footsteps of acerbic superstars of years past. This kind of thing works! Charles Barkley got traded out of Philadelphia in 1992 thanks to his artful tantrums, and he was rewarded with NBA MVP honors and a finals appearance the following season with the Phoenix Suns. When Kobe Bryant <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=2886927">asked to be traded</a> to the Chicago Bulls in 2007, Lakers management responded by overhauling the team. The ensuing trades and acquisitions helped them get to three consecutive NBA Finals. Things tend to turn out pretty swell for the squeaky wheels.</p>
<p>Of course, nothing could happen. The Cavs don’t <em>have</em> to trade Kyrie. They could treat us to the most awkward season in NBA history, where every game would be a masterpiece performance of passive-aggressive workplace relations. The steely glances from LeBron would be worth the price of admission alone.</p>
<p>If Irving does get shipped out of Cleveland, reports indicate he wants to play for San Antonio, Minnesota, Miami, or New York.&nbsp;He’s not winning a championship on any of those teams (unless Spurs coach Gregg Popovich convinces him to pass more via hypnosis and the Warriors all contract vertigo),&nbsp;but they all offer some pretty fun scenarios. I'm rooting for the Knicks—it’s been more than 50 years since <em>The</em> <em>Twilight Zone</em>’s “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Bottle">Man in the Bottle</a>”&nbsp;episode, and a modern retelling starring Kyrie Irving would teach lots of kids to be careful what they wish for.</p>
<p>No matter what happens, it's more likely than not that Irving has played the first note of the Cavaliers’ funeral hymnal. It’s hard to imagine the team recovering from whatever slapdash restructuring they’ll be forced to attempt.<a></a> I also can’t imagine Irving will improve his career by bolting from the best player in the world (a player who also happens to complement his skills perfectly), but it will be a whole lot of fun to watch him try. Plus, it will make Dan Gilbert angry. That should make everyone happy.</p>
<p><em><strong>*Correction, July 24, 2017:</strong>&nbsp;This story originally misstated the year Kyrie Irving hit the shot to win the NBA Finals. It was 2016, not 2015. (<a>Return.</a>)</em></p>Sat, 22 Jul 2017 22:31:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/kyrie_irving_s_trade_request_could_destroy_the_cavs_and_his_own_career_worth.htmlNick Greene2017-07-22T22:31:00ZHis trade request could destroy the Cleveland Cavaliers and might ruin his career. I wholeheartedly approve.SportsKyrie Irving’s Trade Request Could Destroy the Cavs and His Own Career. Worth a Shot!100170722003sportsnbabasketballNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/kyrie_irving_s_trade_request_could_destroy_the_cavs_and_his_own_career_worth.htmlfalsefalsefalseKyrie Irving’s trade request could destroy the Cavs and his own career. Worth a shot!I think Kyrie is a mad genius.Getty ImagesKyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers reacts against the Golden State Warriors in Game 4 of the 2017 NBA Finals on June 9 in Cleveland.Howard Hughes Has a Plan to Fix the NBAhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/a_howard_hughes_inspired_plan_to_burn_the_nba_to_the_ground_and_start_over.html
<p>Lost in the midst of a manic free agency period is an uncomfortable secret about the upcoming NBA season: Most of it is going to be pretty bad.</p>
<p>Blame the Eastern Conference, which, unfortunately, makes up 50 percent of the league. Look past the LeBron-led Cavaliers and the aggressively competent Boston Celtics, and you will find a collection of teams so disappointing that to call them ragtag would be a disservice to both rags and tags.</p>
<p>Consider Philadelphia. The 76ers may be the most exciting team in the East, even though they have spent five straight years actively trying to lose as many games as possible. Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, Markelle Fultz, and co. will need time to jell, however, and the Sixers would be best served by another year in the draft lottery. But, in a <em>Producers</em>-esque turn of events—Springtime for Hinkie, if you will—they’ll probably be good enough to make the playoffs in next year’s pathetic Eastern Conference.</p>
<p>According to <em>FiveThirtyEight</em>, <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-nbas-best-are-all-out-west/">22 of the NBA’s best 30 players</a> will be playing out West in 2016–17. The previously most-lopsided mark came in 2003–04, when 21 of the top 30 players were consolidated in one conference. That was a godawful year for basketball, one that culminated in a mercifully brief rock fight between the Detroit Pistons and Karl Malone’s Los Angeles Lakers. (The Eastern Conference Pistons won those finals, which perhaps hurts my larger argument. I’m hoping that putting this caveat between parentheses will allow us to ignore this inconvenient fact and just move on. It was a bad season, what more do you people want?)</p>
<p>The enormous imbalance between the NBA’s two conferences isn’t necessarily a catastrophe for the league, as the good teams are popular enough to carry the duds. Turner Sports and ESPN are entering the second season of <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2014/10/5/6916597/nba-new-tv-deal-espn-turner-24-billion">a nine-year, $24 billion contract</a> with the NBA. The networks are obliged to carry 164 nationally televised games a year, meaning they have to broadcast plenty of miserable matchups. Due to the nature of time zones and the manner in which our planet rotates around its axis, Eastern Conference games will always fill the majority of early prime-time slots. The games showcased on TNT&nbsp;on Thursday&nbsp;nights and on ABC&nbsp;on Sunday afternoons are the only ones scheduled for their respective time slots, meaning there’s no way <a href="http://www.nfl.com/flexible-schedules">to “flex” in better games</a>. The only way out of a&nbsp;Thursday&nbsp;Knicks-Bulls game on TNT will be a civilization-ending asteroid strike. And if fans want to watch good teams that aren’t on national TV, they have to <a href="http://www.nba.com/leaguepass">pony up for NBA League Pass</a>, the premium service that broadcasts out-of-market games.</p>
<p>For a league that is often celebrated for its progressive approach to media, this is a surprisingly rigid and archaic system. To find something similar, you’d have to teleport to prewar Hollywood.</p>
<p>In the 1930s and ‘40s, the five major movie studios controlled every aspect of the medium. They consolidated this power and maintained their dominance thanks to a practice called “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_booking">block booking</a>.” Rather than allowing theaters to buy films one at a time, the big studios forced them to buy large packages of movies. Because of this bundling system, the studios had little incentive to make all their movies watchable and entertaining. Instead, MGM could package an all-time classic like <em>Gone With the Wind </em>with a dud like <em>Judge Hardy and Son</em>, confident in the knowledge that theaters would cough up the cash for the latter so they could have the privilege of screening the former. What’s more, these studios also owned their own massive theater chains and sold film packages to themselves, meaning they could set the market as they pleased.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court outlawed block booking in 1948’s <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/334/131/"><em>United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.</em></a> but sent the issue to a lower court to handle the implementation. Before that court could make a ruling—one that likely would’ve been ineffectual and watered down—Howard Hughes saw an opportunity. Though profitable, Hughes’ RKO routinely got crushed by its “Big Five” competitors. Rather than creep along per usual, Hughes did something odd: He went to the government, admitted antitrust guilt, and volunteered to split up his studio.&nbsp;It was a clever way to level the playing field, and, in that regard, it worked. Hughes forced his competitors’ hands, and the monopolistic studio system came crumbling down from within. The onus to purchase movie packages disappeared, and bad films had to fend for themselves on the open market.</p>
<p>While there’s a lot of common ground here, this isn’t a perfect analogy. There’s not a great point of comparison to the movie studios controlling the theater chains. That would be like if Adam Silver came over after dinner and made you watch Brooklyn Nets games because the NBA owned your television set. And are NBA teams the studios or the movies? If it’s the latter, then the Golden State Warriors are <em>Gone With the Wind</em>, and the Brooklyn Nets are a short film about how cigarettes cure laryngitis. But really, smartly run NBA franchises teams do operate like the well-run studio machines. Over an 82-game season, they release more hits than duds, because they’re able to discover talent, consolidate it, and lock it up with long-term contracts.</p>
<p>It must be incredibly frustrating for those Eastern Conference teams that can’t figure out how to compete—those RKO-like franchises that lose year after year. The Knicks, for instance, aren’t exactly producing&nbsp;smash hits every season. Sure, they’re making a little money, but that’s only because the system is rigged. Now picture James Dolan, sick of watching his big-market team humiliate itself repeatedly. It would take an incredibly greedy and hapless owner to think something like Hughes’ plan would work for the NBA. I think we just found our prime candidate, a guy who’d be ready and willing to burn the whole league to the ground.</p>
<p>Wouldn’t it be a gas to tell the U.S. federal government to tear up the NBA’s lucrative TV contract and force the league to start from scratch? He’d even get a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JD_%26_The_Straight_Shot">JD &amp; the Straight Shot</a> song out of it. </p>
<p><em>Hey Mr. Judge Man, give the people what they crave.</em> <em>Listen to JD, man, it’s the league he’s tryin’ to save.</em></p>
<p>Next thing you know, Sacramento Kings owner and disruption lover Vivek Ranadiv&eacute; joins Dolan’s mutiny. Never ones to shy away from potentially saving a few bucks, the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers join the party. The collective bargaining agreement is renegotiated to eliminate salary caps, and every player is freed from his current contract. The Knicks sign Karl-Anthony Towns to a billion-year covenant &agrave; la Scientology. The Orlando Magic field a squad made up entirely of unpaid interns. Kevin Durant plays on a new team every quarter. The sport begins to resemble <em>The Running Man, </em>but, on the bright side, the East is relatively competitive again.</p>
<p>Not to be a downer, but Hughes’ plan was a disaster for RKO, and it greatly wounded Hollywood. Postwar prosperity meant people could afford to entertain themselves with nonmovie things like vacations and sports, and the ascension of television saw a large swath of Hollywood’s audience siphoned away. The broken-up studios cratered financially, and it took years for the industry to become stable again.</p>
<p>By 1958, Howard Hughes began his descent into madness. He locked himself in his private movie theater where he sat, naked and alone, for weeks on end. That sounds almost as bad as having to watch the Knicks 82 times a year.</p>Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:15:42 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/a_howard_hughes_inspired_plan_to_burn_the_nba_to_the_ground_and_start_over.htmlNick Greene2017-07-14T20:15:42ZThe Eastern Conference is awful. There are too many bad games on TV. Should we burn it to the ground and start over?SportsA Probably Terrible, Howard Hughes–Inspired Plan to Burn the NBA to the Ground and Start Over100170714014nbasportsbasketballNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/07/a_howard_hughes_inspired_plan_to_burn_the_nba_to_the_ground_and_start_over.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe NBA is horribly imbalanced. Howard Hughes had a plan to burn it to the ground and start over:The Orlando Magic field a squad of unpaid interns. Kevin Durant plays on a new team every quarter.Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Bettman/Getty Images, Tim Clayton/Getty Images.Howard Hughes, the movie mogul, and James Dolan, owner of the Knicks.No Shelter From the Woj Bombshttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/06/adrian_wojnarowski_and_espn_a_match_made_in_hype_heaven.html
<p>On Wednesday,&nbsp;Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted out some cataclysmic NBA news.</p>
<p>This was a blockbuster move—the Los Angeles Clippers’ stellar point guard signing up to play with recent MVP runner-up James Harden—a transaction huge enough that it may affect which team loses to the Golden State Warriors in next year’s conference finals.</p>
<p>If you read the replies to Wojnarowski’s tweet, though, one of the biggest NBA trades in years seems secondary—overshadowed by the man who broke the story.</p>
<p>In the parlance of NBA Twitter, Wojnarowski dropped a “Woj bomb,” hence the deployment of mushroom cloud GIFs.</p>
<p>In his 10 years at&nbsp;Yahoo—the company gave Wojnarowski his own website, the Vertical, in 2016—the NBA reporter built a reputation as the basketball world’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence">Eye of Providence</a>, a mysterious, all-seeing entity who breaks news with terrifying speed and accuracy.</p>
<p>Judging by the reaction to his tweets, one might get the sense that he is actually the one setting these deals into motion—that teams make moves because Wojnarowski reports them rather than the other way around. It’s all part of the mythos of Woj, a cult of personality devoted to a man who doesn’t seem to have much of a discernible personality beyond “reporter who is always on Twitter.”</p>
<p>On&nbsp;Saturday, Wojnarowski will be joining ESPN, a move that coincides with (and in certain exceedingly nerdy circles perhaps overshadows) the start of the NBA’s free agency period. For years, his identity has been wrapped up in the fact that he doesn’t work for the Worldwide Leader in Sports. He’s been known to pick at ESPN in his columns, sometimes referring to them as an unnamed “cable sports company.”&nbsp;His defection to the world’s most powerful sports media company at once feels surprising and inevitable. It’s a marriage of questionable harmony but undoubtable impact, the equivalent of hiring a T. rex to hem your pants.</p>
<p>In his tenure at Yahoo, Wojnarowski has been a one-man wrecking crew, often out-scooping the world’s sports media hydra on the strength of his connections and unparalleled ability to type with his thumbs. Earlier this week, in his last days at the Vertical, he <a href="https://twitter.com/WojVerticalNBA/status/879509065839280128">broke the news</a> that Jeff Van Gundy—who works for ESPN—will be coaching USA Basketball’s World Cup qualifying team.</p>
<p>Wojnarowski’s unique ability to delight his fans and bedevil his rivals has been most evident during the NBA draft, when he managed to report, via Twitter, the upcoming selections&nbsp;well before&nbsp;they’re announced on ESPN’s live broadcast. The fact that one guy could ruin the drama and pageantry of a manicured television event infuriated ESPN execs and undoubtedly contributed to the company’s decision to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.</p>
<p>In tandem with Wojnarowski’s hiring, <a href="http://deadspin.com/a-running-list-of-espn-layoffs-1794664091">ESPN laid off</a> a number of talented NBA reporters, many of whom covered individual teams and contributed postgame recaps and analysis. They also terminated Marc Stein, who has long been Wojnarowski’s biggest competitor. Stein is a prodigious reporter in his own right, and many within the company have expressed dismay at his departure. Given that it seems like the network is shifting toward breaking news and scoops, there’s only one logical explanation for laying off Stein: ESPN’s suits feel it’s important to have Wojnarowski be the unquestioned leader of their NBA scoop machine. If you’re looking for an explanation for why that might be, you should ask someone who has better sources than I do.</p>
<p>ESPN, which <a href="http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2017/04/nba-tv-deal-billions-espn-turner-ratings-layoffs/">pays $1.4 billion annually</a> for the rights to televise NBA games, wants to claim total ownership of almost every NBA storyline. The network’s coverage of the NFL provides an instructive example. In 2013, <em>Deadspin</em> did a nice&nbsp;<a href="http://deadspin.com/how-espn-manufactures-a-story-colin-kaepernick-edition-1185400028">play-by-play</a> of a story the network created out of thin air and subsequently covered to death. It began on <em>SportsCenter</em>, when one of ESPN's NFL pundits said, “I truly believe Colin Kaepernick could be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever.” ESPN got Kaepernick’s response to the statement, and that response was then covered at length on the network’s myriad shouting-head programs. The pundit who made the comment eventually became a featured guest across its various platforms, and the issue was debated for days until a natural endpoint was reached. (It somehow became about Tim Tebow.)</p>
<p>ESPN has been built to trim every last edible bit from a story, and with basketball’s greatest rumormonger and scoop-getter at its disposal, there’s no telling what the Worldwide Leader will now be capable of. My best guess is it will look a lot like what Gustavus Swift did to cows back in the 19<sup>th</sup> century.</p>
<p>Swift owned and operated one of the largest slaughterhouses in Chicago, but selling salted pork scraps wasn’t enough for him. In the late 1800s, the market demanded fresh beef, which meant cattle were shipped live to Eastern population centers where they would be butchered and sold after transit. Swift had a nose for inefficiency, and he got a great whiff of it with each and every steer-filled boxcar that passed through Chicago on its way east. If his company could somehow slaughter and butcher the beef in Chicago, he’d be able to expand his operation while more efficiently meeting demand.</p>
<p>To facilitate this, Swift hired an engineer to design a refrigerated train car that could ship dressed meat over long distances without sacrificing freshness. The Swift-owned cars were loaded with ice in Wisconsin, packed with beef at Swift’s Chicago slaughterhouse, and then sent east and sold for maximum profit. The supply process was so efficient and direct, a side of beef in the freezer of a New York wholesaler would hang off the same hook as the cow from which it was cut back in Chicago weeks prior.</p>
<p>It is perhaps a bit on the nose that the process Swift pioneered is known as “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavus_Franklin_Swift#Vertical_integration">vertical integration</a>.” The man ESPN lured from the Vertical will provide the grist for a never-ending mill of debate shows, news programs, and interview segments. The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-future-of-the-nba-will-be-decided-on-twitter-1498750216?mod=e2tws"><em>Wall Street Journal </em>recently reported</a> that the&nbsp;NBA receives as much attention on Twitter during summer free agency as it does during the regular season.&nbsp;ESPN is counting on its ability to grab that attention by harnessing the multikiloton power of the Woj bomb.</p>
<p>Consider, though, that the two biggest NBA stories of the past five years—LeBron James’ return to Cleveland and Kevin Durant’s move to Golden State—got broken via personal essays published <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2014/07/11/lebron-james-cleveland-cavaliers">in <em>Sports Illustrated</em></a> and <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/kevin-durant-nba-free-agency-announcement/">the <em>Players’ Tribune</em> respectively</a>, not via reporters on Twitter. If a player is savvy enough, he can circumvent the scoop machine and take ownership of his own breaking news, Adrian Wojnarowski be damned.</p>
<p>If history is any indicator, the establishment won’t give up the means of production without a fight. In the words of Karl Marx, “Tune into <em>First Take</em> for more reaction.”</p>Fri, 30 Jun 2017 22:05:07 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/06/adrian_wojnarowski_and_espn_a_match_made_in_hype_heaven.htmlNick Greene2017-06-30T22:05:07ZAdrian Wojnarowski gets more scoops than any other NBA reporter. He’ll make the ESPN hype machine even more terrifyingly powerful.SportsAdrian Wojnarowski Will Make the ESPN Hype Machine Even More Terrifyingly Powerful100170630021sportsnbabasketballNick GreeneSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/06/adrian_wojnarowski_and_espn_a_match_made_in_hype_heaven.htmlfalsefalsefalseAdrian Wojnarowski will make the ESPN hype machine even more terrifyingly powerful:His scoops will provide the grist for a never-ending mill of debate shows, news programs, and interview segments.Yahoo! SportsAdrian Wojnarowski.John Wooden’s Homespun Creed Was Not So Homespunhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/john_wooden_s_seven_point_creed_came_from_a_1931_magazine_article.html
<p>John Wooden died in 2010, but his legend remains as powerful as ever. Much of the coach’s mystique relates to his remarkable record: From 1964 through 1975, his UCLA basketball teams won 10 NCAA championships, including streaks of seven consecutive titles, 88 straight regular-season victories, and 38 straight NCAA Tournament wins. But the Wizard of Westwood’s lore extends beyond bottom-line results to off-court wisdom.</p>
<p>The most enduring of Wooden’s totems is his “<a href="http://www.coachwooden.com/pyramid-of-success">Pyramid of Success</a>,” a collection of the character traits—team spirit, confidence, loyalty, and so on—needed to achieve “the peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” Second only to the pyramid in its exalted status is the seven-point creed handed down to Wooden by his father, Joshua. When John graduated from eighth grade in the small town of Centerton, Indiana, the story goes, Joshua gave him a $2 bill and a plain, white card. On one side of that card he’d written <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/248/1101.html">a poem by Henry van Dyke</a>. On the other side was the creed that encapsulated Joshua Wooden’s philosophy of life:</p>
<p>1. Be true to yourself.<br /> 2. Help others.<br /> 3. Make each day your masterpiece.<br /> 4. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.<br /> 5. Make friendship a fine art.<br /> 6. Build a shelter against a rainy day.<br /> 7. Pray for guidance and count and give thanks for your blessings every day.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071437924/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>My Personal Best: Life Lessons From an All-American Journey</em></a>, Wooden described the moment he received that card from his father. “I turned the little white card over and saw that Dad had also written down the creed he so often shared with my brothers and me: seven simple rules to follow in life,” he wrote. “As I began to read it, he said, ‘Johnny, try and live up to these and you’ll do all right.’ ”</p>
<p>As Wooden advanced in the college basketball coaching ranks, the card became an important symbol of the coach’s roots. “I can’t get enough of his father, Joshua Hugh Wooden—a man so wise and so rich in insight that he formulated these seven life principles,” longtime NBA executive Pat Williams writes in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0800721276/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>Coach Wooden: The 7 Principles That Shaped His Life and Will Change Yours</em></a>. “I believe the character and achievements of John Wooden can largely be traced to a piece of paper his father gave him on the day he graduated from the eighth grade at a little country grade school in Centerton, Indiana.”</p>
<p>The tale of Joshua passing on his personal creed has become an entrenched part of the Wooden mythos, a story related in Williams’ book and Seth Davis’ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250060850/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>Wooden: A Coach’s Life</em></a><em> </em>and numerous tomes co-authored by the coach himself. There is no doubt that the story of the seven-point creed is powerful and inspiring. It is also not entirely true.</p>
<p>Contrary to legend, Joshua Wooden did not come up with the seven-point creed himself. While doing research for my dissertation on American sports and Christianity, I discovered that Wooden’s father copied the creed from an article titled “Help Yourself to Happiness.” That story, which was published in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Magazine"><em>American Magazine</em></a><em> </em>in 1931, was based on an interview with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hessin_Clarke">John H. Clarke</a>, who in 1922 resigned from his position as a Supreme Court justice to live a less strenuous life of travel and contemplation.</p>
<p>Clarke was one of the hundreds of successful professional men profiled in the <em>American Magazine </em>in the 1920s and early 1930s. These profiles were intended to provide guidance to the magazine’s white, middle-class, male readership, helping them achieve success in the modern world of corporate capitalism. The magazine, which<em> </em>counted more than 2 million subscribers into the early 1930s, endorsed the cultivation of “traditional” 19<sup>th</sup>-century values (self-control, self-sacrifice, perseverance) alongside the more modern precepts of teamwork, cooperation, and open-mindedness. “Very few of [the <em>American Magazine’s</em>] articles, when you check them closely, are concerned with the glorification of material success,” <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/the-trump-nobody-knows/486251/">frequent contributor and apostle of business Bruce Barton</a> explained in 1930. “The qualities that are held up for our approval are courage, victory over circumstance, and devotion to an ideal.”</p>
<p>In the January 1931 issue, writer Merle Crowell condensed Clarke’s wisdom into six tips for achieving happiness. Crowell introduced them as a “few simple rules ... that any one of us can follow with profit” and encouraged readers to “draw upon Judge Clarke’s rich experience for our own guidance through the days ahead.” Clarke’s six rules were as follows:</p>
<p>1. Be true to yourself.<br /> 2. Make each day your masterpiece.<br /> 3. Help others.<br /> 4. Drink deeply from good books.<br /> 5. Make friendship a fine art.<br /> 6. Build a shelter against a rainy day.</p>
<p>Other than the seventh point (“Pray for guidance and count and give thanks for your blessings every day”) and an additional phrase after the fourth (“especially the Bible”), Justice Clarke’s list is identical to Wooden’s seven-point creed. A 1956 article in the <em>Los Angeles Times </em>provides clarity on the two discrepancies. The article quotes the coach as telling UCLA students that his father’s words—“ ‘An Adopted Creed,’ which I have always carried in my wallet”—would help them focus on building character rather than accumulating material possessions. In articulating the creed, he lists the six points laid out in the <em>American Magazine </em>article; there is no seventh point, and no mention of “especially the Bible” after the fourth point.<em></em></p>
<p>It is clear, then, that Joshua Wooden’s creed did not come from the mind of an ordinary man from the Midwest, and that John Wooden knew his father’s wisdom had been “adopted” from elsewhere. Given that the creed was originally published in 1931 and that Wooden told the UCLA students he received it when he was in college, we can also be sure that Joshua didn’t pass it along to his son upon his eighth-grade graduation; John, who was born in 1910, was enrolled at Purdue University in 1931. What we can say with certainty is that Justice Clarke’s six rules for happiness resonated with John Wooden’s father, that he chose to make those precepts his own, and that he passed those rules on to his son.</p>
<p>But what happened after 1956? How and why did this origin story change?</p>
<p>As of 1966, the new mythology had already emerged. That year, Wooden discussed his father’s creed in an article for a devotional book titled <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000NMHKW6/?tag=slatmaga-20">Courage to Conquer: America’s Athletes Speak Their Faith</a>. </em>While that book had a limited audience, the following year the magazine <em>Guideposts</em>—a monthly digest of religious inspiration with more than 1 million readers—published an excerpt of Wooden’s devotional under the title “The Creed I Try to Live By.” In 1968, a final revised version of the creed was syndicated in newspapers as part of a “Lenten Guideposts” series. In all three instances, Wooden wrote that his father gave him the creed when he graduated from a small country grade school in Centerton, Indiana. Rather than suggesting that his father had adopted it from someone else, the coach claimed the creed originated with his father, and that Joshua had titled it “Seven Things to Do.” The seven points, Wooden explained, “have helped me develop a balanced attitude toward victory and defeat.”</p>
<p>We may never know exactly why Wooden’s story changed. Perhaps he added language about the Bible and prayer because he was writing for a religious audience, or perhaps he felt those points reflected his father’s values. As for adding the details about a small country school in Indiana, <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/76rwk8fd9780252037771.html">Wooden’s most astute biographer, Johnny Smith</a>, provides some contextual guidance. Between 1964 and 1968, the coach’s UCLA teams won four national titles, beginning their legendary run. At the same time, a culture of protest began to emerge on colleges campuses, with students speaking out against racism, war, traditional sexual mores, and authority figures of all kinds. In the face of this youth revolt, Smith explains, Wooden became a symbol of traditional values, projecting an “image of consensus in a period of dissent” and championing the “middle-American values under attack.”</p>
<p>Whether intentional or not, in reframing his father’s creed as a reflection of the values of small-town Midwestern life, Wooden (or his ghostwriter) offered powerful evidence for the continued importance of traditional values in an age of upheaval. The new origin story resonated deeply with long-standing American myths: Joshua Wooden, an ordinary and self-educated man with no special claim to fame, worked hard and passed his practical wisdom on to his son. His son in turn applied those principles on his path to phenomenal success.</p>
<p>In his 2011 book on Wooden, Pat Williams asked the coach’s former players what they remembered about the seven-point creed. Most of them, it turned out, didn’t recall hearing anything about it during their playing days. But there was another audience eager to learn from Wooden’s advice. The 1972 publication of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0087M8VDQ/?tag=slatmaga-20">Wooden’s autobiography</a>—which included both the seven-point creed and the Pyramid of Success—helped market the coach’s wisdom to the business community. That connection has only gotten stronger in the last few decades, with the release of books like <em>Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization </em>and <em>Beyond Success: The 15 Secrets to Effective Leadership and Life Based on Legendary Coach John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success</em>.</p>
<p>Given <em>The</em> <em>American Magazine</em>’s<em> </em>close links with the business world of the 1920s and 1930s, the recent proliferation of books that link Wooden’s life philosophy with corporate success have brought Clarke’s six rules for happiness full circle. A message intended for businessmen in 1931 apparently appeals to businessmen and businesswomen in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. Wooden’s acolytes may see this as evidence of the timelessness of his message; after all, it is rarely considered a bad thing to “help others.” But the reality is that Wooden’s advice is firmly rooted in the values of the early 20<sup>th</sup> century United States. Rather than timelessness, then, the continued relevance of Wooden’s seven-point creed reflects the persistence of the American belief in the superiority of small-town values. It also embodies the paradoxical idea central to <em>The American Magazine’s </em>message: True success cannot be measured in wins and losses, but those with more wins than losses are best qualified to explain its ingredients.</p>Wed, 17 May 2017 14:30:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/john_wooden_s_seven_point_creed_came_from_a_1931_magazine_article.htmlPaul Putz2017-05-17T14:30:00ZThe legendary basketball coach claimed his father developed a brilliant, seven-point philosophy of life. That’s total hogwash.SportsThe Origin Story John Wooden Told About His Famous Homespun Creed Is Total Hogwash100170517007sportsbasketballPaul PutzSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/john_wooden_s_seven_point_creed_came_from_a_1931_magazine_article.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe origin story John Wooden told about his famous homespun creed is total hogwash:The legendary basketball coach claimed his father developed a brilliant, seven-point philosophy of life. That’s total hogwash.Rich Clarkson/NCAA Photos via Getty ImagesJohn Wooden coaches UCLA to an NCAA championship over Kentucky in San Diego on March 31, 1975.Is Klay Thompson a Robot?http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/is_klay_thompson_a_robot.html
<p><em>On&nbsp;this week’s edition of <strong>Slate</strong>’s sports podcast </em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/hang_up_and_listen/2017/05/racism_in_boston_sports_lavar_ball_and_nike_s_breaking2_on_hang_up_and_listen.html"><em>Hang Up and Listen</em></a><em>, Adam Willis pondered the inner workings of (allegedly) carbon-based lifeform Klay Thompson. An adapted transcript of the audio recording is below, and you can listen to Willis’ essay by clicking on the player beneath this paragraph and fast-forwarding to the<strong>&nbsp;</strong>53:14&nbsp;mark.</em></p>
<p>A <em>New Yorker </em>profile from 2015 titled “<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/julio-jones-aspiring-robot">Julio Jones, Aspiring Robot</a>” highlighted the Atlanta Falcons receiver’s narrow precision and perfect repetition. Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson was nicknamed Megatron for his powerful stature and inhuman athleticism. Memphis Grizzlies coach <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/grizzlies-fizdale-heaps-praise-on-robotic-kawhi-leonard-he-bleeds-antifreeze/">David Fizdale recently hypothesized</a> that Kawhi Leonard of the San Antonio Spurs doesn’t have to breathe and “bleeds antifreeze.”</p>
<p>While tongue in cheek, these comparisons constitute some of the highest praise in sports—reserved for elite competitors who operate with robotic efficiency. Like those other guys, Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors is known for his extraordinary precision. Fans of Thompson’s game like to joke about his automatonic qualities, his three-point shooting accuracy, and his lack of discernible emotion. His teammate <a href="https://theringer.com/2017-nba-playoffs-golden-state-warriors-klay-thompson-kevin-durant-steph-curry-ce980107bb88">Zaza Pachulia said</a>, “I’ve seen him get emotional. Like, when he had 60 points? His tongue goes out, a little, maybe on the 50<sup>th</sup> point.” <a href="http://clutchpoints.com/warriors-gm-bob-myers-compares-klay-thompson-terminator/">According to Warriors general manager Bob Myers</a>, Thompson is “like the first Terminator, the one who doesn’t say anything.”</p>
<p>But many a true word hath been spoken in jest, and I have my suspicions that Thompson is a bona fide cyborg. The evidence is substantial. For one, Thompson looks almost inhumanly generic. The <em>Ringer</em>’s Jason Concepcion <a href="https://theringer.com/nba-players-that-look-like-computer-generated-2k-players-46772d0136df">wrote recently</a> that Thompson looks “like if an engineer from <a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OqyF4lfuUGE/maxresdefault.jpg"><em>Prometheus</em></a>, an&nbsp;Easter Island statue, and the NPR logo merged in a teleporter.” (I think he meant the PBS logo, <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/06/klay-thompson-golden-state-warriors-pbs-logo-looks-like">which does look remarkably similar to the Warriors shooting guard</a>.) “My guy looks like the laziest police sketch ever. Klay’s face is so blank that the image search of his video game face returns ‘Man,’ ” continued Concepcion. In other words, cyborg Thompson hasn’t been disguised in a particularly convincing human likeness.</p>
<p>While Stephen Curry is hailed for his accuracy from deep, his shooting form is erratic and unmistakably human. Thompson, on the other hand, shoots with textbook form, the same every time, and you get the sense that he could hit three-pointers with his eyes closed. ESPN’s Sports Science tested this idea. After shutting off the lights in the gym, Thompson went eight for 10 from three in total darkness. The only explanation? Sonar. Those vacant eyeballs are just placeholders in his head.</p>
<p>More evidence: After a 41-point performance against the Timberwolves earlier this season, <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/warriors-klay-thompson-credits-sunny-weather-for-his-hot-hand-after-41-point-game/">Thompson credited his success to the weather</a>. “The sunshine’s been so good to me,” he said. “Whenever I go outside it just puts me in a great mood.” That’s right—Thompson admitted that he is solar-powered.</p>
<p>And when a fan approached Thompson in March and <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/03/klay-thompson-warriors-fan-toaster-autograph-sign-photos-confused-fantastic">asked him to sign a toaster oven</a>, he stared at the contraption curiously, as if recognizing a long-lost relative.</p>
<p>A brief slip-up in a postgame interview last week is the most definitive piece of androidal evidence yet. After the Warriors beat the Utah Jazz in Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals, Thompson answered reporters’ questions as he always does, with all the personality of Amazon’s Alexa. That makes sense—if Thompson is indeed a robot, his verbal function will most likely consist of an endless loop of programmed banalities.</p>
<p>But as the questioning progressed, Thompson began to short-circuit. His eyes glazed over. His language failed. Sentences trailed off into silence, and he stammered like a glitchy computer game. You could see the pale green glow of his machinery fading behind those animatronic eyes.</p>
<p>What happened to our man/machine? <em>Deadspin</em> posited that Thompson’s <a href="http://deadspin.com/klay-thompsons-autopilot-system-failed-in-the-middle-of-1794930652">autopilot system failed</a>. But whatever the cause, he quickly recovered from the 404 error when a reporter tossed him a softball question.</p>
<p>The gears clicked back into place, his hard drive rebooted, his cyborg gaze refocused on the blank space before him, and Klay Thompson’s mission of intergalactic basketball domination was back online.</p>Fri, 12 May 2017 15:58:36 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/is_klay_thompson_a_robot.htmlAdam Willis2017-05-12T15:58:36ZA <strong><em>Slate</em></strong> investigation.SportsIs Klay Thompson a Robot?100170512013sportsbasketballnbaa slate investigationAdam WillisSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/is_klay_thompson_a_robot.htmlfalsefalsefalseIs Klay Thompson a robot?A Slate investigation.Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesA robot named Klay Thompson speaks with the media on Feb. 17 in New Orleans.Flipping Awesomehttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/odubel_herrera_flips_his_bat_all_the_time_and_thank_goodness_for_that.html
<p>It’s been 18 months since Toronto slugger Jose Bautista launched the <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/watch-jose-bautista-and-the-most-valuable-bat-flip-of-2015/">flip heard ’round the world</a>—a brash toss of his bat, following a go-ahead playoff home run, that <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/jose-bautista-bat-flip/">ignited a baseball culture war</a> over how a man sets down his lumber after a home run.</p>
<p>Does he place it lightly on the grass, from the hip, with a light flick of the wrist?</p>
<p>Or does he launch it into the air like an underhand volleyball serve?</p>
<p>It’s a curious fault line for a sport whose most iconic moment is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babe_Ruth%27s_called_shot">Babe Ruth calling his shot</a> in the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs—an unrivaled act of braggadocio that still inspires playground imitators. (Please, Babe: Respect the game.)</p>
<p>Yet here we are. Older players and fans <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/sports/baseball/bat-flip-bautista-blue-jays.html">tend to think</a> the bat flip is a disrespectful act of showboating. Their younger counterparts, especially Latino players, have embraced this rare manifestation of exuberance and personality in a sport that <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/19074938/where-all-mlb-superstars-gone">suffers terribly from a lack of both</a>.</p>
<p>And then there’s Philadelphia Phillies centerfielder Odubel Herrera, the Henry Ford of bat flips. In his capable hands, this luxury highlight is becoming an everyday occurrence, accessible to even the most casual of baseball viewers.</p>
<p>That’s in part thanks to the Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/OdubelsBatFlips">Odubel’s Bat Flips</a>, which has chronicled Herrera's novel approach of tossing his bat to commemorate all manner of occasions. Herrera flips when he gets a hit, when he takes a base on balls, and when he grounds out to second base.</p>
<p>This Twitter chronicle began with Herrera, the Venezuelan-born All-Star known as El Torito, flipping his bat three times in five plate appearances—a double, a grounder for a double play, a fly-out to center, and two walks—on Opening Day. Three bat flips in five appearances set him on pace for 486 flips in the season, Odubel’s Bat Flips noted.</p>
<p>Part of the fun, obviously, is in the telling, as this April 10 bat flip after a routine fly ball demonstrates:</p>
<p>Herrera’s first home run of the year on April 18 came, of course, with a side of bat flip—his 13<sup>th</sup> of the year.&nbsp;(El Torito’s pace slowed a bit after the season opener. As of May 9, he was up to 22 flips for the 2017 season.) But the real innovation in Herrera’s flipping, again, is that the most boisterous of tosses may come in response to a forgettable at-bat. These are the kind of flips, Cubs ace Jake Arrieta <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/03/jake-arrieta-young-players-bat-flip-cubs-mlb-jose-bautista">said</a> this spring, that might get a guy hit in the ribs:</p>
<p>Arrieta needs to relax. The carefree El Torito, transforming the rarest of exclamation points into a daily punctuation mark, is just the player that baseball needs. By freeing the flip from its typical post-dinger landing spot, he has reminded us of the everyday jubilation that comes from hitting a baseball. Even if that ball is a measly grounder to second base.</p>Fri, 12 May 2017 15:04:10 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/odubel_herrera_flips_his_bat_all_the_time_and_thank_goodness_for_that.htmlHenry Grabar2017-05-12T15:04:10ZIn praise of the Philadelphia Phillies’ Odubel Herrera, who tosses his bat skyward when he grounds out to second base.SportsIn Praise of Baseball Hero Odubel Herrera, Who Flips His Bat When He Grounds Out to Second100170512011sportsbaseballHenry GrabarSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/odubel_herrera_flips_his_bat_all_the_time_and_thank_goodness_for_that.htmlfalsefalsefalseIn praise of baseball hero Odubel Herrera, who flips his bat when he grounds out to second base:In his capable hands, this luxury highlight is becoming an everyday occurrence.Mitchell Leff/Getty ImagesOdubel Herrera of the Philadelphia Phillies hits a solo home run and flips his bat afterward while playing the Miami Marlins on Sept. 18.The Hero the NBA Needshttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/the_nba_playoffs_belong_to_isaiah_thomas.html
<p>The semifinal series between the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards is what the Eastern Conference playoffs are all about: two flawed teams chipping and clawing at each other for the privilege of being summarily humiliated by LeBron James. So far the home team has won all four games, with the Wizards doing so far more convincingly, taking their two victories by a combined 46 points. The decisive factor in these two blowouts has been the Wizards’ ability to neutralize Boston’s 5-foot-9 offensive virtuoso Isaiah Thomas, holding him to 32 points in Games 3 and 4 after he’d torched them for 86 in the first two. If the Wizards keep a lid on Thomas for two more games, they will almost certainly win the series. Unfortunately for Washington, that <em>if</em> is a lot bigger than Thomas himself.</p>
<p><a href="https://theringer.com/2017-nba-playoffs-isaiah-thomas-boston-celtics-washington-wizards-game-2-53-points-582b0d6d9c7c">Thomas’ 53-point performance in Game 2</a> was legendary, transcendent, and awe-inspiring, and only partly because no other on-court moment in these desultory NBA playoffs has taken possession of any of those adjectives. Even before that, the Celtics star had endured the most difficult postseason in recent NBA history. On the eve of the Celtics’ first-round series against the Bulls, Thomas’ 22-year-old sister Chyna was <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19167406/isaiah-thomas-sister-chyna-thomas-killed-one-car-accident">killed in a single-car accident</a> in Washington state. During that series, which the Celtics won in six games, Thomas flew back and forth across the country to be with his family, and mere hours after Boston’s series-clinching win, he delivered the eulogy at Chyna’s funeral. Then, in the opening minutes of Game 1 of the Wizards series, <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19282028/isaiah-thomas-boston-celtics-loses-tooth-game-1-win-washington-wizards">Thomas caught an elbow from Otto Porter</a> that knocked out his left front tooth; he underwent emergency dental surgery (twice) prior to his 53-point outburst in Game 2. In the aftermath of the Celtics’ Game 3 loss, rumors began swirling that Thomas had a broken jaw, which prompted the Celtics to put out a <a href="https://twitter.com/JeffZillgitt/status/860607659577311233/photo/1">statement</a> debunking that rumor but cataloging the actual extent of Thomas’ dental woes in excruciating, gruesome detail.</p>
<p>Thomas plays basketball like someone is about to take the sport away from him, like the kid on the playground at dusk who talks everyone else into running it back just one more time even though he’s late for dinner. He is the greatest little-man scorer since Allen Iverson, and what he lacks in Iverson’s incandescent athleticism he makes up for in efficiency. Thomas is a gunner, but he rarely takes a bad shot; this past season, he shot 46.3 percent from the floor, 37.9 percent from three-point range, and 90.9 percent from the free throw line, all higher percentages than Iverson ever posted in a season. Most great basketball players excel at manipulating space—think Anthony Davis gobbling up the lane, LeBron soaring to the rim, Steph Curry forcing coverage 30 feet from the basket. Thomas, the smallest man on the court nearly every minute he plays, has instead tailored his game around space’s counterpart: time. He’s a blindingly quick player who gets to the basket by going fast the moment his defender slows down, or slowing down the moment his defender moves too fast. His control of his own body—and, by extension, of the bodies tasked with defending him—is thrilling to watch, and in its own way as breathtaking a display of athleticism as an off-the-backboard alley-oop. In his 53-point Game 2, Thomas scored 20 points in the fourth quarter and nine more in overtime, his baskets taking on a relentless inevitability, as if he were a diminutive Road Runner toying with a court full of broken-ankled Wile E. Coyotes.&nbsp; </p>
<p>A native of Tacoma, Washington, and a product of the vaunted Seattle hoops scene, Thomas was <a href="http://seattle.sbnation.com/seattle-nba/2011/6/24/2241344/2011-nba-draft-results-isaiah-thomas-nervous-sacramento-kings-second-round">the very last player selected</a>, by the Sacramento Kings, in the 2011 NBA Draft. Thomas was then deemed disposable by both the Kings and the Phoenix Suns before being <a href="http://www.espn.com/boston/nba/story/_/id/12348825/boston-celtics-get-isaiah-thomas-phoenix-suns-marcus-thornton-first-round-pick">acquired by the Celtics in February 2015</a>. From the 1980 acquisition of Kevin McHale and Robert Parish for Joe Barry Carroll to the 2013 plundering of four Brooklyn Nets first-round picks for a year of Paul Pierce and the crumbling husk of Kevin Garnett, the Celtics have been on the winning side of some of the most lopsided trades in NBA history. The heist of Thomas for Marcus Thornton and the 28<sup>th</sup> pick in the 2016 draft is rapidly rising up that list.</p>
<p>In Boston, his ascent from spunky curiosity to full-blown folk hero has been meteoric. Not since David Ortiz in 2004 has an athlete enthralled New England to such a spectacular degree. Even earlier this season, as Thomas was dumping in wheelbarrows full of points—he averaged 28.9 points per game this regular season, the second-highest mark in team history behind <a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/birdla01/gamelog/1988/">Larry Bird in 1987–88</a>—and willing an undertalented, overachieving Celtics team to the top spot in the Eastern Conference, smart NBA types wondered whether Boston might be better off trading him this summer, before having to face the possibility of signing him to a contract worth upward of $200 million. Those days are over. Right now, the likelihood of the Celtics trading Thomas this offseason feels roughly equivalent to the likelihood of the city of Boston trading the John F. Kennedy Library.&nbsp; </p>
<p>The great “yes, but” of Thomas’ game is his defense. In 2016–17, he ranked 468<sup>th</sup> in ESPN’s defensive real plus-minus—dead last in the NBA. Thomas is not simply a defensive liability in the mold of fellow offensive-minded All-Stars Kyrie Irving and DeMar DeRozan; he is bad enough that Celtics coach Brad Stevens has attempted to build <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19243080/zach-lowe-boston-celtics-hiding-isaiah-thomas-vs-chicago-bulls-nba">an entire scheme around keeping Thomas as far away from the ball as possible</a>. There’s no subgenre of YouTube supercuts of Thomas not giving a shit on defense, as is the case for Houston Rockets guard <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMKavKEKX2Q">James Harden</a>. Rather, his problems on the defensive end stem from the fact that he’s a lot smaller than everyone else, and not nearly as adept at reacting to other people as he is at getting other people to react to him.</p>
<p>Thomas’ defensive failings have rightfully prompted a good deal of handwringing among more analytically minded NBA observers, among them CBS’s Matt Moore, who suggested in <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/celtics-isaiah-thomas-is-a-fourth-quarter-killer-but-which-team-is-he-killing/">a much-discussed post</a> back in January that Thomas’ fourth-quarter scoring exploits were canceled out by his defensive inadequacies. Even if you don’t buy that argument, it’s undeniable that his strengths and weaknesses compel a unique and somewhat perverse sort of chess. When the opposing team is on defense, its goal is to keep the ball away from him at all costs; when on offense, its goal becomes precisely the opposite.</p>
<p>That sounds easy enough, but the little man who got picked last has made a career out of defying the logic of professional basketball. The moment you start believing he’s going to do what you want him to do, Isaiah Thomas has you right where he wants you.</p>Wed, 10 May 2017 14:24:02 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/the_nba_playoffs_belong_to_isaiah_thomas.htmlJack Hamilton2017-05-10T14:24:02ZThe Cavs and Warriors are undefeated, but these playoffs belong to Isaiah Thomas.SportsThe Cavs and Warriors Are Undefeated, but the NBA Playoffs Belong to Isaiah Thomas100170510006Jack HamiltonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/the_nba_playoffs_belong_to_isaiah_thomas.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe Cavs and Warriors are undefeated, but the playoffs belong to Isaiah Thomas:The little man who got picked last is the hero the NBA needs.Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesIsaiah Thomas of the Boston Celtics looks on during the first quarter of his 53-point Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals at TD Garden on May 2 in Boston.The Quest for a Sub–Two-Hour Marathonhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/what_nike_s_breaking2_marathon_event_tells_as_about_human_performance.html
<p><em>A version of this story originally appeared on </em><a href="http://sportsscientists.com/2017/05/pursuit-sub-2-marathon-next/"><em>The Science of Sport</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p>If the sub–two-hour marathon is the Mount Everest of human endurance performance in 2017, then Eliud Kipchoge has reached the ledge just beneath its summit.</p>
<p>Kenya’s Olympic marathon champion, and the world’s No. 1 marathoner, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/eliud-kipchoge-finishes-marathon-26-seconds-behind-2-hour-milestone/">came within 25 seconds of dipping under the two-hour mark</a> in Nike’s staged test event in Monza, Italy last weekend.&nbsp;That equates to a shade under 150 meters short of running the distance in less than two hours.</p>
<p>Expectedly, the performance has inspired much excitement, and the already lively debate about the prospects of a sub–two-hour race will only intensify as a result. What happens next in the quest to summit this mountain? To continue the analogy, now that Kipchoge has shown the way and put the ropes in place, how long will it take before another runner—or Kipchoge again—returns to finish the climb and reach the summit?</p>
<p>That depends on how flexible you want to be with your standards for what constitutes a legitimate marathon performance.&nbsp;The Nike event was highly stage-managed, and a few of the tactics used to “optimize” the conditions for Kipchoge make it ineligible as an official world record.&nbsp;This is why the <a href="http://www.runnersworld.com/newswire/dennis-kimetto-breaks-world-record-at-berlin-marathon">world record still belongs to Kenya’s Dennis Kimetto</a>, who ran 2:02:57 in Berlin in 2014, even though Kipchoge is now 2:33 faster over the distance!</p>
<p>The size of that gap between Kipchoge’s “theoretically optimized marathon” and the “real world record” tells you one of two things about the future of the marathon, depending on your perspective. Option one is that Kipchoge is so good that he has shown what is truly possible.&nbsp;“No limits,” as Kipchoge himself said.&nbsp;If you lean this way, then you would expect a genuine sub–two-hour race to happen soon&nbsp;without the carefully designed strategy&nbsp;we saw in Italy.&nbsp;Kipchoge is indeed the world’s dominant marathon runner, having now won seven of his eight races, including the Olympics, London, and Berlin, and scaring the world record once already.&nbsp;If anyone was going to move the event forward, it was him.</p>
<p>Option two is the realization that some of Nike’s tactics were so effective that they were worth between two and three minutes to Kipchoge.&nbsp;If you believe this, then the answer to the question “Where to next?” is that we’ll return to 2:02:30 or thereabouts, just a shade under the current world record, and&nbsp;actually get two to three minutes slower for the foreseeable future.&nbsp;It means that unless Nike (or someone else) designs another staged event like this one, the sub–two-hour barrier will remain safe for a while longer.</p>
<p>Telling these options apart requires that we unpack what we saw from Kipchoge and Nike over the weekend.</p>
<p>My opinion is that the single most effective tactic used on Saturday was to have Kipchoge run most of the distance close behind a Tesla vehicle onto which had been mounted a large wind shield pretending to be a clock.</p>
<p>There was no reason for the size of this clock, or the close proximity of the car to the runners, other than to block air.&nbsp;They even provided lasers to show runners exactly where to run for maximum benefit.&nbsp;This was the most egregious and obvious “cheat” compared to a normal marathon that Nike used in Monza.&nbsp;I’d have no major issue with humans pacing and sheltering another runner, but this was, in my opinion, a step too far, and worth most of the improvement we saw.</p>
<p>The benefit of this protection from the wind cannot be understated, but it’s tricky to calculate with great precision.&nbsp;It’s certainly not as large as you’d get on a bicycle riding in a large peloton, but it is not insignificant either.&nbsp;It is estimated that a runner at two-hour–marathon pace spends around 15 percent of his energy overcoming air resistance, and so reductions in that would be expected to produce time savings by virtue of freeing up more power to actually run. Quite how much is the question.</p>
<p>Have a look at the calculations, which I’ve created based on a highly informative Twitter exchange with <a href="https://twitter.com/DanBiggles22">Dan Bigham</a>.</p>
<p>What Bigham did was to&nbsp;estimate the time savings, in seconds, for a runner going at elite marathon pace, with the assumption that 20 percent of the cost of overcoming air resistance can be eliminated.</p>
<p>I’ll try to break down the process for you:</p>
<p>You start with the time and speed.&nbsp;For my calculation, I’ve taken a guy running a 2:02 marathon, which is a speed of 5.76 meters per second.</p>
<p>Next, you need an assumption of what the power output is.&nbsp;This doesn’t make a huge difference to the overall outcome, because it’s all relative anyway, but Bigham has used 5.5 watts per kilogram and a mass of 55 kilograms.&nbsp;That gives you the runner’s power output in watts (302.5).</p>
<p>Now, part of that power output is “running power” and part of it is “aero power.”</p>
<p>Aero power, or the power needed to overcome air resistance, is a function of drag (Cd, the drag coefficient), the athlete’s frontal area (A), and his running speed (V) as described by the equation Aero Power = 0.5 x air density x CdA x V<sup>3</sup>. For the conditions in Monza, air density is 1.239 kilograms per cubic meter, which I’ve used in the calculations. Using a CdA of 0.4 (the same as an upright cyclist, so a reasonable assumption, I think) gives an undrafted aero power output of 49.9 watts. This is the work required to overcome air resistance in a nondrafted scenario.&nbsp;Note that it is 16.5 percent of the total power output.&nbsp;The&nbsp;remaining 83.5 percent, or 252.6 watts, is the run power in the undrafted situation.</p>
<p>Next, we have to make an assumption about how effective drafting is at reducing that “aero power” component.&nbsp;For this, Bigham has assumed that 20 percent of the aero power can be eliminated by drafting. That means the 49.9 watts comes down by 20 percent, to a new value, called the&nbsp;“draft aero,” of 39.9 watts.</p>
<p>That means the&nbsp;draft run power is now 302.5 – 39.9 = 262.6 watts, which means the athlete can devote an additional 10 watts of power toward running compared to in the undrafted scenario.</p>
<p>Next, we work out a ratio of the two run powers, again using that relationship between power and the cube root of velocity, and that gives us a “run coefficient ratio” of 1.013.&nbsp;This is the factor by which the velocity would increase in this 20 percent drafted scenario.</p>
<p>It means that the velocity of 5.76 meters per second would now be increased by a factor of 1.013, to a new velocity of 5.84 meters per second, thanks to an increase in the run power component when drafting.&nbsp;That in turn means a new marathon time of 7,226 seconds, or 2:00:26, and&nbsp;a time savings, in this scenario, of 94 seconds.</p>
<p>Here’s the big assumption, though: How much does drafting save relative to being undrafted?&nbsp;In the table above, the assumption is 20 percent.&nbsp;To give you a comparison, a cyclist in a peloton saves 40 percent to 60 percent, so this 20 percent assumption is quite conservative, but probably reasonable for a runner behind a large group of other runners.</p>
<p>So, what I’ve done next is show how the time saving would look if the drafting were even more effective.&nbsp;The graph below shows the expected time saving for a range of drafting efficiencies.&nbsp;Here you can see that if you assumed 40 percent saving, the time reduction in the marathon would be three minutes and three seconds.</p>
<p>Which is likeliest?&nbsp;I don’t know, so I won’t venture a specific answer, other than to say that in the normal marathon scenario, where you have a pack of elite runners accompanied by three or four pacemakers for 25 kilometers, I’ve seen estimates that it’s worth around one minute, or 10 to 15 percent draft efficiency (indicated by point A in the graph).</p>
<p>Therefore, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that running behind six pacesetters and the Tesla for 35 to 40 kilometers would be worth between 20 and 30 percent draft efficiency, which equates to an advantage of between 1:30 and 2:20 (shown by Area&nbsp;C in the graph).</p>
<p>Certain imperfect assumptions must be made, but to be conservative for the sake of a beneficial performance&nbsp;assumption for the runner, you’d say it was worth 1:30 (20 percent efficiency), and the projection would be&nbsp;that&nbsp;Kipchoge’s 2:00:25 was worth around a 2:02:00&nbsp;had he not been able to rely on the car, shield, and six runners for basically the entire race.</p>
<p>The next avenue that Nike exploited was the shoe.&nbsp;This received much publicity in the buildup to the run, because the company had controversially claimed that it gave athletes a 4 percent advantage.&nbsp;They even incorporated the “4%” into the name: the <a href="http://news.nike.com/news/nike-zoom-vaporfly-elite">Zoom Vaporfly Elite 4%</a>.</p>
<p>I believe the International Association of Athletics Federations should ban&nbsp;the inclusion of any devices that may act as springs, and should regulate the midsole cushioning material, precisely because it’s impossible to quantify a performance advantage of this kind of tech. (<a href="https://sportsscientists.com/thread/oscar-pistorius/">This is the same logic applied to Oscar Pistorius</a>; you do it on principle, not performance.)</p>
<p>Anyway, on this shoe, I&nbsp;think it’s safe to say that it&nbsp;is&nbsp;not worth 4 percent; if it were, we’d have already seen some eye-popping performances, because that shoe has now been used by enough runners over the past 12 months that we’d know.&nbsp;Remember that 4 percent for an elite male marathon runner is about five minutes.&nbsp;It would be obvious, a bigger effect than doping, if this is what all runners were getting.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that the benefit is zero. I suspect there is a small benefit, though here we have neither data nor theory to even allow an estimation.&nbsp;Adidas previously claimed that its Boost midsole was worth 1 percent in efficiency and around one minute in the marathon.&nbsp;Here, too, data on performance was lacking, but it probably wasn’t worth that alleged 1 percent boost.</p>
<p>Is the Nike Zoom Vaporfly Elite 4% worth an additional 0.5 to 1 percent?&nbsp;Possibly. Runners believe so, as do Nike’s marketing team and scientists. (No surprise there.)&nbsp;It’s also possible that some runners may be getting a little more while others get nothing; having responders and nonresponders to technology is common. I know that previous iterations of shoes incorporating springs have been highly variable, with some people getting worse and some a lot better.</p>
<p>Theoretically, if a runner gets a 0.5 percent advantage, then it plays out in much the same way the air-resistance advantage would.&nbsp;They can run at a given speed using less energy, or could use the same energy to run that little bit faster—this time perhaps 30 to 60 seconds faster in a marathon. The short answer here is that we simply don’t know if Nike’s shoe is worth any time at all, but reports from athletes and researchers says it is, and so this may have helped Kipchoge slightly.</p>
<p>Every runner knows that getting his in-race fuel strategy&nbsp;right in the marathon is key.&nbsp;I’m less convinced that this is a major source of advantage to most of these elite runners, though, because they are mostly getting it right already. There are not many instances of elite marathon runners—particularly when breaking world records—encountering any such limit to either hydration or fuel.&nbsp;Given that most of the marathon world records have been set with faster second halves than first halves, and without any “wobbly parts” where they slow down dramatically, it would seem safe to suggest that running out of energy late in the race is rarely a problem.</p>
<p>So while I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand, and it certainly is a key factor in runners who are not getting it right, I don’t see much benefit over and above a normal marathon being gained by fancy carbohydrate drinks and free access to them.&nbsp;If this is worth 15 seconds in a marathon, I’d be surprised.</p>
<p>How about the selection of the course in Monza? The choice of track was primarily based on minimizing the number of turns and its pancake-flat gradient.&nbsp;There’s no doubt there is direct time savings when you can eliminate 90 degree turns. For you and I, running at our speed, corners and intersections don’t matter, but at 21 kilometers per hour, you’re looking at perhaps a second (about six meters) every time it happens.</p>
<p>Monza was perfect in this regard—no corners, only sweeping bends—so that may have been worth around 20 seconds in a marathon compared to most courses. (London in particular suffers from many sharp corners.)</p>
<p>We also heard much about the training support provided, but I find it difficult to believe that anything changed in the athletes’ preparation as a result.&nbsp;It was claimed that Lelisa Desisa had changed his approach a good deal based on feedback, but then he had the worst day of the three runners, finishing in 2:14. Performance is complex, so knowing the effect of a general or systemic intervention at the level of training is just about impossible. I think there is an arrogance to sports science that assumes it can improve on generations of wisdom and knowledge that East Africans have acquired about how to prepare for a marathon.&nbsp;Certainly, I doubt whether Kipchoge got any benefit.</p>
<p>Finally, the runners had arm-warmers, and supposedly state of the art clothing, and even wore stickers to reduce drag on their legs.&nbsp;If this was worth even two seconds in a marathon I’d be surprised.&nbsp;They got the Nike swoosh on display, though.</p>
<p>I’d conclude that the drafting effect of a car plus six runners provided the greatest benefit, in the region of 1:30 if you make what is a safe assumption.&nbsp;The course was likely worth up to 30 seconds, bringing a conservative estimate to 2:00 in total.&nbsp;If you want to be more generous, this would increase a bit because of hydration/fuel benefits.</p>
<p>We simply don’t know the effect of the shoes, but if that is worth even 30 seconds, then we have Kipchoge getting a total benefit of 2:30 if we’re estimating conservatively. More if you think the shoe is that effective, less if you are skeptical.</p>
<p>If you settle at 2:30, that means his 2:00:25 is the equivalent of a 2:02:55, which you’ll note is a lot like the current world record of 2:02:57.&nbsp;That is some food for thought. For all the excitement about making a huge leap forward and redefining what humans are capable of in the marathon, his performance may end up reflecting what humans have already shown they’re capable of for the marathon!</p>
<p>It means, in conclusion, that Kipchoge didn’t so much break through the barriers of human endurance as partly bypass them.&nbsp;He did not get close to a sub–two-hour race because he overcame the potential limits of energy cost of running that fast. Rather, those potential limits were shifted slightly, moved aside compared to normal marathons, by the engineers and the Tesla, and then he took full advantage to get close to the summit.&nbsp;It is, to finish the analogy, like getting close to the summit thanks to the benefit of extra oxygen. This is a remarkable achievement, but not one that tells us anything about human potential in the classic sense of what a marathon involves.</p>
<p>As for the original question—“What next?”—I think we get slower before we get faster.&nbsp;I strongly suspect Kipchoge would, on a good day in Berlin, break the world record, and could probably run 2:02:30–ish.&nbsp;That’s my pick for best-case scenario in the foreseeable future, so I hope he runs the Berlin Marathon in good conditions in September.</p>
<p>That 2:02:30 is where we truly are in the marathon, without all the aids provided on Saturday.&nbsp;If Kipchoge does that, then let’s talk about sub–2:02, which might happen within three or four more years.&nbsp;But sub-two, legitimately, is still a ways off.</p>
<p>If we see another marathon “trial/test” like Monza, then I think sub-two might be&nbsp;possible, given the combination of benefits at around 2:30. Whether Kipchoge can do it again, I don’t know. It would have to be him, I think. There’s nobody else in the marathon who can, so it would be fun to see a similar event now, just to test that out.</p>Tue, 09 May 2017 22:50:02 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/what_nike_s_breaking2_marathon_event_tells_as_about_human_performance.htmlRoss Tucker2017-05-09T22:50:02ZEliud Kipchoge almost broke the barrier. What does his race tell us about the limits of human performance?SportsWhat an (Almost) Sub–Two-Hour Marathon Tells Us About the Limits of Human Performance100170509014runningRoss TuckerSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/what_nike_s_breaking2_marathon_event_tells_as_about_human_performance.htmlfalsefalsefalseWhat an (almost) sub–two-hour marathon tells us about the limits of human performance:Eliud Kipchoge didn’t so much break through the barriers of endurance as partly bypass them. Pier Marco Tacca/Getty ImagesEliud Kipchoge celebrates the Nike Breaking2: Sub-Two Marathon Attempt at Autodromo di Monza on Saturday in Monza, Italy.Mike D’Antoni Already Changed the NBA Oncehttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/mike_d_antoni_changed_the_nba_with_the_suns_he_s_doing_it_again_with_the.html
<p>James Harden, who led the NBA with 11.2 assists per game, wasn’t a point guard until this season. Despite his well-rounded game, Harden was known primarily as a high-volume scorer with an irritating knack for getting to the free throw line. But when Mike D’Antoni took over as the head coach of the Houston Rockets last year, he saw Harden as something else: the kind of sleek distributor who could serve as the hub of an elite NBA offense. Harden retooled his game and is now one of the leading candidates for MVP.</p>
<p>Except in D’Antoni’s universe, nothing is ever that straightforward. The Rockets are the most entertaining team in this year’s playoffs because D’Antoni, in partnership with math-minded General Manager Daryl Morey, refuses to accept conventional basketball wisdom. James Harden still might not be a point guard. He doesn’t conform to a conventional conception of the position nor was he tasked with an entirely new set of responsibilities. D’Antoni felt he could maximize Harden not by altering his game but by building a system around it, one that pushes the coach’s widely imitated tactics to a new extreme.</p>
<p>The NBA is in the grips of a small-ball revolution. <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/rockets-break-single-season-nba-3-point-record-but-how-long-will-it-last/">Teams shoot three-pointers at a historic clip</a>, often from way beyond the arc. They push the tempo at every turn and manufacture looks by moving the ball freely around the perimeter. Post play is of secondary importance as teams go with mix-and-match lineups that blur positional roles. This style of play is often credited to the Golden State Warriors, the most dominant team in basketball over the past three seasons. In reality, it originated more than a decade ago with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743298136/?tag=slatmaga-20">D’Antoni’s “Seven Seconds or Less” Phoenix Suns teams</a>.</p>
<p>D’Antoni, who’d spent most of the 1990s coaching in Italy, began his tenure in Phoenix during the 2003–04 season. His tenure didn’t begin in earnest, though, until <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=1833028">the Suns signed Steve Nash</a> the following summer. At a time when plodding, isolation-heavy offenses, poor shooting, and low scores were the norm, the Suns—who relentlessly pushed the tempo and, per their eventual moniker, looked to shoot in the first few seconds of the shot clock, before opponents were set—were a revelation. Nash, who won the MVP award after the 2004 and 2005 seasons, conjured passing lanes out of thin air. Amar’e Stoudemire, nominally a center, dunked on opponents with vicious abandon. The 6-foot-7 Shawn Marion guarded every position, ran the floor like a gazelle, and knocked down corner threes. Shooters with deep range fired at will and spread defenses thin. And while D’Antoni certainly imparted his philosophy, he refused to impose order from the top down. The Suns’ personnel determined the shape of the team, as when smooth-passing big man Boris Diaw added a new wrinkle in 2005–06.</p>
<p>The Suns had their share of detractors. They were accused of being soft and relying on rule changes that limited contact around the perimeter. They didn’t play enough defense; they were all style and no substance. It also didn’t help that their archrivals, the San Antonio Spurs, epitomized the NBA’s conservative “right way.” Critics of D’Antoni’s Suns felt vindicated by the fact that they never made the NBA Finals. The closest they got was in 2007, when <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/sports/basketball/16suns.html">Stoudemire’s controversial suspension for leaving the bench area</a> cost them the chance to make the Western Conference Finals. But the Suns, who went 177–69 from 2004 to 2007, were too good and too seminal to dismiss as gimmickry.</p>
<p>The first evidence of this came when the Spurs themselves underwent a dramatic transformation. After winning it all in 2007 and making the conference finals in 2008, Gregg Popovich’s team was bounced in the first round of the 2009 playoffs. Sensing that a stalwart defense combined with a low-scoring, grind-it-out approach to offense wasn’t cutting it, Popovich—who up until that point was perceived as a strict traditionalist with a curmudgeonly aversion to the long ball—changed the direction of his team. In 2007–08, they ranked 28<sup>th</sup> out of the NBA’s 30 teams in points per game and 28<sup>th</sup> overall in pace; by 2011–12 they were at second and seventh, respectively. The Spurs went from a very good three point–shooting team in 2007–08 to second overall in total threes and first in three point percentage in 2011–12. This change wasn’t an unequivocal success—their .610 winning percentage in 2009–10 was the franchise’s worst&nbsp;in 13 years. But the Spurs’ style of play had been irrevocably altered. It had become faster, more fluid. And their 2014 title suggested that the influence of D’Antoni’s thinking had helped San Antonio push past a period of stagnation.</p>
<p>Popovich saw which way the game was headed and got out ahead of the curve—or at least got out ahead of everyone except the Suns. Whether other teams followed the Spurs’ example or evolved as a matter of course, D’Antoni is now widely acknowledged as the architect of the heady, up-tempo style that has become the sport’s lingua franca. As Golden States Warriors coach <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/playoffs/2015/story/_/id/13023943/nba-playoffs-phoenix-suns-mike-dantoni-influence-nba-finals">Steve Kerr told ESPN’s J.A. Adande in 2015</a>, “[C]oaches have changed their thinking so you’re getting more and more pace and open court. … And Mike ... he’s the guy who triggered the changes.”</p>
<p>No team has been more instrumental in this shift than the Warriors. If the connection between the Spurs and the Seven Seconds or Less Suns is to some degree circumstantial, in Golden State’s case the lineage is unbroken. In 2007, Kerr took over as general manager of the Suns. Outside of his playing career and tenure as a broadcaster, this was the entirety of Kerr’s NBA r&eacute;sum&eacute; when Golden State hired him in 2014. When Kerr took over the Warriors, Stephen Curry became a freewheeling playmaker in the vein of Nash and was encouraged to let the ball fly from wherever he saw fit. Marion is the clear antecedent for Draymond Green’s versatility. Klay Thompson’s quick release was tailor-made for the Seven Seconds or Less system. The team has led the league in scoring during all three of Kerr’s seasons at the helm. And more broadly, the Warriors’ carefree, creative spirit is a direct echo of what made the Suns such a breath of fresh air in 2004.</p>
<p>Were it not for the Warriors’ 2015 title—and yes, to some degree, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/04/the_golden_state_warriors_are_the_greatest_nba_team_ever_and_the_most_likable.html">their ill-fated 73–9 campaign the following season</a>—“SSOL” would not loom so large today. D’Antoni’s legacy was tarnished when he bombed with the Knicks and then the Lakers. Prior to his renaissance with the Rockets, he had been an assistant coach for the lowly Sixers, a team engineered by former general manager Sam Hinkie to lose as many games as possible. While his ideas were more relevant than ever, the man himself was an afterthought until Rockets GM Daryl Morey decided he wanted to build a modern version of the Nash-D’Antoni Suns. The analytically inclined Morey knew that an onslaught of three-pointers and dunks—coupled with frequent trips to the free throw line—would make for a maximally efficient NBA team. The Rockets shot plenty of threes before D’Antoni’s arrival, and James Harden’s gift for drawing fouls has always been peerless. But the offense often stalled when Harden held the ball, and Dwight Howard, the team’s second-best player, was a black hole in the paint. (Howard signed with Atlanta this past offseason.)</p>
<p>D’Antoni figured out how to keep the offense moving without detracting from Harden’s terrifying one-on-one play, surrounding Houston’s franchise player with a complementary whir of moving targets. Harden now toggles back and forth between full-on attack mode and playmaking as unpredictable as his off-kilter drives to the basket. Instead of converting Harden into a point guard, D’Antoni converted the position to suit Harden’s strengths.</p>
<p>The Rockets up the ante on SSOL by having at least three shooters on the floor at all times, most notably combo guards Eric Gordon and Lou Williams, who both come off the bench, and the defensive pest Patrick Beverley, who compares favorably to the Suns’ indispensable Raja Bell. These players are often situated well beyond the three point line, stretching the defense to such an extent that big men Clint Capela and Nen&ecirc; often scamper to the rim untouched. It’s a frenetic, sometimes frantic system, and it’s been extremely effective at generating Morey’s prized outcomes. The Rockets led the league in free throw attempts and <a href="http://stats.nba.com/teams/traditional/#!?sort=FG3A&amp;dir=-1&amp;Season=2016-17&amp;SeasonType=Regular%20Season">averaged 40.3 three point attempts per game</a>, 6.4 more than the second-place Cavaliers, and 7.6 more than the NBA record prior to this season, which had been set by the 2014–15 Rockets. Houston also finished third in pace and second in offensive rating (behind only the Warriors) in finishing the regular season 55–27, a marked improvement from last season’s 41–41 record.</p>
<p>It’s hard to know what the long-term ramifications of this team will be. Harden is so inimitable that it’s hard to imagine anyone duplicating the Rockets’ template. Then again, the same could be said of Steve Nash. Even if Houston never wins a title, it could have a Suns-like run that forces the rest of the league to take notice. But the impact of this kind of radicalism is rarely understood in the moment. The Rockets could be the future of the NBA. We just don’t know it yet.</p>Mon, 08 May 2017 18:08:25 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/mike_d_antoni_changed_the_nba_with_the_suns_he_s_doing_it_again_with_the.htmlNathaniel Friedman2017-05-08T18:08:25ZWith the Houston Rockets, he’s revolutionizing the league again.SportsMike D’Antoni Already Changed the NBA Once. With the Rockets, He’s Doing It Again.100170508009nbabasketballsportsNathaniel FriedmanSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/mike_d_antoni_changed_the_nba_with_the_suns_he_s_doing_it_again_with_the.htmlfalsefalsefalseMike D’Antoni already changed the NBA once. He’s doing it again with James Harden and the RocketsInstead of converting James Harden into a point guard, the Houston coach converted the position to suit Harden’s strengths.Jonathan Bachman/Getty ImagesHouston Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni, at a game this season in New Orleans.I Love What LaVar Ball Stands Forhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/i_love_what_lavar_ball_stands_for_i_hate_lavar_ball.html
<p><em>A version of this piece originally appeared on the blog </em><a href="http://verysmartbrothas.com/black-basketball-dads-and-not-knowing-how-to-feel-about-lavar-ball/"><strong>Very Smart Brothas</strong></a><em>. It’s reprinted with the author’s permission.</em></p>
<p>It took roughly a month at Sterrett Classical Academy for me to be known as the best basketball player there, an admittedly considerable feat for a 10-year-old sixth-grader in a school with 14-year-old eighth-graders. It was a status I earned due to a combination of my reputation from playing with the Homewood YMCA and from my exploits during recess and gym class. Unfortunately, I submitted the mandatory physical and doctor’s waivers three days late. And Mr. Simons, Sterrett’s basketball coach, wasn’t going to allow me to try out for the team.</p>
<p>I went home and told my dad. He shook his head, said “OK,” and continued reading the <em>Post-Gazette</em>. The next day, he showed up to the school during lunch time, pulled me out of the cafeteria, and requested a meeting with Mr. Simons (who was also the seventh-grade social studies teacher). We met in the gym.</p>
<p>Calmly, my dad apologized for the lateness of the physical and requested that Simons allow me to try out. He appreciated the apology but said something about the rule being the rule and denied the request. My dad had another idea:</p>
<p>“How about this? You play my son one-on-one right now. If he beats you—and he will—he’s allowed to try out. If not, you’ll never hear from me again.”</p>
<p>Mr. Simons turned beet red and started to stammer.</p>
<p>“Sir, that’s not really necessary.”</p>
<p>My dad was steadfast.</p>
<p>“Oh, yes it is.”<em></em></p>
<p>Sensing that this was a no-win situation—and also likely intuiting that if my dad was <em>this </em>confident about my abilities, a bending of the rule would be worth it—he relented. By the end of the day, I was on the team. I didn’t even have to try out.</p>
<p>Several months later, while I was playing in a spring AAU tournament at Reizenstein Middle School,&nbsp;my dad noticed a team with preternaturally skilled and disciplined 11-year-olds running through a bevy of complex, college-level plays and zone presses. He learned that these kids were from St. Barts and that they played a diocese schedule during the season and an AAU schedule in the spring and summer that had them playing up to 100 meaningful games a year.</p>
<p>Later that week, he convinced my mom that they should<strong>&nbsp;</strong>a) take me out of Sterrett and enroll me in St. Barts the following school year&nbsp;and b) allow me to repeat sixth grade because I was young for my grade—since my birthday falls a day before New Year’s Eve, I was always the youngest person in every class I was in—and repeating the year would give me an advantage athletically and socially.</p>
<p>I have countless&nbsp;stories like this about my dad. The 200 shots a day we’d take on the courts behind Peabody High School the summer of ’89 to upgrade my shot from a slow-release, 10-year-old-appropriate set shot to a full jump shot released over my head and at the peak of my jump. The basketball magazines and almanacs he’d buy me when I professed an interest in devouring as much about the game and its history&nbsp;as I could. The mornings I’d watch him play in the Sunday Morning Warriors basketball league at the Y, where I’d sneak on the court at&nbsp;halftime to shoot foul shots.</p>
<p>Even today, his Facebook page is home to dozens of snapshots of those moments. Usually me receiving some award from some camp or league or game, and him behind the lens, making sure my trophy was facing the camera.</p>
<p>And, of course, sometimes it would just be us.</p>
<p>It is difficult not to see some of my dad in LaVar Ball, the polarizing father of basketball phenoms Lonzo Ball (a projected top-three NBA draft pick), LiAngelo&nbsp;Ball (a high school senior committed to play at UCLA), and LaMelo Ball (a 10<sup>th</sup>-grader who might already be the most popular athlete in high school sports). And not just my dad, but the countless other black basketball dads found on bleachers at AAU tournaments and modeling perfect triple-threat stances on concrete blacktops&nbsp;in the hood. Shepherding their sons (and sometimes daughters) from court to court and neighborhood to neighborhood. And, if they’re good enough, from city to city, state to state, and school to school. Simultaneously serving as their kids’ drill masters, coaches, instructors, one-on-one opponents, hype men, financiers, advisers, protectors, bouncers, dietitians, jitneys, critics, vision boards, sponsors, and parents. Willing to challenge each and every entity, real or imagined, standing between them and their ultimate goal. Which could be a college scholarship. Or an NBA contract. Sometimes, they’re the only other black faces in the gym (or the league) besides their kids on the court, their presence ensuring that “these white people” don’t try any mess with their boys.</p>
<p>I know that if you sat Lonzo, LiAngelo, and LaMelo down, they’d each have stories about their dad that would mirror mine.&nbsp;And if you glanced through their social media accounts and family photo albums, they’d each have just as many pictures and videos either taken by their dad or with them posing next to him. And I have no doubt they treasure those pics and those memories and those moments as much as I do.</p>
<p>This context both constructs and complicates my feelings about LaVar Ball. Like my dad and the countless other black basketball dads out there, he wants what’s best for his sons. This is undeniable. My dad’s goal was for me to receive a college basketball scholarship. And I did. Mission accomplished. LaVar Ball’s sons are each better basketball players than I was, and his athletic goals for them are understandably and <em>appropriately</em> greater.</p>
<p>Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit to the strain of schadenfreude I experience when a black person challenges and perhaps even upsets the status quo the way LaVar Ball currently is attempting to do. I’m compelled to root for him even if I don’t agree with his methods (I don’t) or even like him very much (I also don’t).</p>
<p>But, those years in those gyms and those courts and on those teams and in those leagues also taught me how to recognize a blowhard and a bully. <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/03/lavar-ball-stephan-gilling-chino-hills-coach-lonzo-lamelo-liangelo-ucla-high-school">Which is exactly what LaVar Ball is</a>. And my distaste and disdain for men like him equals the affinity I have for the black basketball dad. I knew men like him, and they are the worst coaches to play for and the worst parents to sit in the stands with, and they very often produce the worst kids to play with and root for. You do not want to be a kid on the same team as the kid with that type of dad. Even if the team is good, he and his parent can be so insufferable and make the game so joyless that you’d rather quit it than win with it.</p>
<p>I look at his attempts to promote his family’s brand with similar ambivalence. He’s not actually <em>wrong</em> to attempt to get in front of the major shoe companies and pursue a lucrative partnership instead of a run-of-the-mill shoe contract. But his&nbsp;<a href="https://bigballerbrand.com/">Big Baller Brand</a> is GeoCities-level terrible; the only thing worse than the name is the logo, which looks like an actual belt buckle sold at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.buckle.com/">Buckle</a>. Also, while Lonzo is a phenom, he’s not the type of transcendent, LeBron-ish talent who&nbsp;could carry a brand by himself. He’s good but not <em>that</em> good.</p>
<p>Combined, this collection of conflicting feelings has left me not knowing how to feel about him. I appreciate what he’s done for his kids, and I get what he’s trying to do, but I don’t fuck with that dude at all. I want him to succeed, in theory, but I don’t want him to be him. And while it’s true that his diligence has helped each of his boys reach this level of prominence—and receive full athletic scholarships—his efforts and actions now are more than likely hurting them. Lonzo Ball has already been publicly rebuked by each of the major shoe companies, an act that, when considering <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/19311049/big-baller-brand-unveils-debut-zo2-shoe-lonzo-ball">the abject terribleness of the just-released Big Baller Brand shoes</a>, might cost them tens of millions of dollars. And I’m certain De’Aaron Fox isn’t going to be the last guard to put a little extra effort into <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-basketball/2017/3/25/15057704/deaaron-fox-kentucky-nba-draft-ncaa-tournament-2017">washing Lonzo on the court</a> just because of his dad’s bombast.</p>
<p>A month or so ago, I asked my dad how he felt about LaVar Ball. Knowing that he shares my feelings for blowhards and bullies, his answer (“He needs to sit down and shut up”) was predictable. I then reminded him of parents like Earl Woods and Richard Williams, who each faced similar criticisms when they first become national figures but (obviously) were proven to be right. I also reminded him of that time he challenged Mr. Simons to play me.</p>
<p>“Yeah, but that was different.”</p>
<p>“How?”</p>
<p>“I challenged him to play <em>you</em>, not me.”</p>Fri, 05 May 2017 15:59:57 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/i_love_what_lavar_ball_stands_for_i_hate_lavar_ball.htmlDamon Young2017-05-05T15:59:57ZI hate LaVar Ball.SportsI Love What LaVar Ball Stands For. I Hate LaVar Ball.100170505010sportsbasketballDamon YoungSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/i_love_what_lavar_ball_stands_for_i_hate_lavar_ball.htmlfalsefalsefalseI love what LaVar Ball stands for. I hate LaVar Ball.On black basketball dads, and not knowing how to feel about a blowhard and a bully who wants the best for his kids.Josh Lefkowitz/Getty ImagesLaVar Ball at the game between Chino Hills High School and Bishop Montgomery High School on March 14 in Torrance, California.The Curse of Jackie Robinsonhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/the_red_sox_could_ve_signed_jackie_robinson_they_gave_him_a_sham_tryout.html
<p>On Monday at Fenway Park, one or more Boston Red Sox fans allegedly hurled <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2017/05/01/orioles-adam-jones-berated-racist-taunts-fenway-park-peanuts/101187172/">the N-word and a bag of peanuts</a> at all-star Baltimore Orioles center fielder Adam Jones. The next day, Bostonians gave Jones <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526710441/watch-orioles-adam-jones-receives-ovation-at-fenway-after-alleged-epithets">a standing ovation</a>. This gesture—along with <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2017/05/02/red-sox-adam-jones-orioles/101191748/">apologies</a> from Boston’s mayor, Massachusetts’ governor, and Red Sox management—did not quite solve the franchise’s long-term problem with racist actions and attitudes.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of Monday’s incident, New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia told a <em>Newsday </em>writer that he and other black players <a href="http://deadspin.com/cc-sabathia-says-every-black-player-expects-racist-taun-1794851777">expect to hear racial epithets</a> every time they play in Boston. And it’s not just baseball. The Washington Capitals’ Joel Ward was on the receiving end of <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1161561-nhl-playoffs-2012-bruins-fans-unleash-racial-slurs-in-response-to-loss">racial slurs</a> when his team faced the Bruins in the 2012 NHL playoffs. And in the realm of less-recent history, the <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2017/05/02/racist-taunts-stir-ancient-pains-boston/o4p3DXlNGof6QbspBDjLUN/story.html"><em>Boston Globe</em></a><em> </em>recalled that intruders once broke into Celtics legend Bill Russell’s home and defecated on his bed. Russell’s daughter later <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/14/magazine/growing-up-with-privilege-and-prejudice.html">recounted the incident</a> in the <em>New York Times</em> as just one example of the racism her father faced in Boston.</p>
<p>The story of race and sports in Boston isn’t just a long list of ugly incidents. As far back as the 1940s, strong-willed individuals have tried to change the attitude of the city and its teams. In that decade, a Boston city councilman named Isadore Muchnick partnered with black sportswriter Wendell Smith to court Jackie Robinson and campaigned to bring black players to the city’s two major-league franchises, the Red Sox and Braves. It’s tempting to imagine that if Muchnick had succeeded, and Boston—not Brooklyn—had broken the color barrier in baseball, Fenway fans might not have showered Jones with abuse on Monday. That’s perhaps generous and overly simplistic, but it’s useful to think about how that long-ago event might have served as an inflection point in Boston’s history, and what that lost opportunity has meant for the city.</p>
<p>Muchnick, a former Hebrew school teacher, served as chairman of Boston’s School Committee, a position that made him the first Jew to hold citywide office. Twenty years before Boston’s infamous busing riots, he was a pioneer in <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=LwdEP9ISuCEC&amp;pg=PA292&amp;lpg=PA292&amp;dq=muchnick+desegregate+boston+schools&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=SIgAouP7rC&amp;sig=LpQS8VI7obhyM6KyRrn2ikfG1FA&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiu_r_z1tbTAhUG2oMKHVZkBtMQ6AEIODAD#v=onepage&amp;q=muchnick%20deseg">pushing for the desegregation</a> of the city’s classrooms. Some have said his motivation for fighting baseball’s Jim Crow system was a self-interested one, given that his constituency was largely black. But in his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0807009792/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston</em></a><em>, </em>Howard Bryant reported that this was a myth; per both the 1940 and 1950 census, Muchnick’s district was 99 percent white. His children’s testimonials in that book, and the rest of Bryant’s reporting, point to the city councilman’s genuine desire to desegregate baseball for reasons other than politics.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/26/sports/sports-of-the-times-that-old-time-politics.html">an account in the <em>Times</em></a>, his push for integrating the Boston teams began when he took over the city council’s speakership in 1943. The Red Sox’s then-owner Tom Yawkey and general manager Eddie Collins were aghast at the idea of a black player joining the team. Yawkey remarked that it would be bad for business as black fans would keep white ones away from Fenway. Collins, who’d played for the infamous World Series–throwing Black Sox team in Chicago, insisted there simply weren’t black players who were good enough to play in the majors. He’d later say that in his 12 years with the club, the Red Sox “never had a single request for a tryout by a colored applicant.”</p>
<p>As the season approached in 1945, Muchnick wielded his power. Then as now, Boston was a Catholic city, and at the time an old law prohibited businesses from holding public events on Sundays. Every year, the Braves and Red Sox received special permits that allowed them to hold Sunday games. Muchnick, however, proclaimed that the issuance of those permits would no longer be a formality. If the teams didn’t give players from the Negro Leagues a tryout, he said, the city would withhold permission to play on Sundays.</p>
<p>Yawkey and Collins relented, agreeing to hold a tryout. On April 16, 1945, a day before opening day, reporters—though none on duty for the <em>Boston Globe</em>—came to see the invited players: Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs, second baseman Marvin Williams from the Philadelphia Stars, and outfielder Sam Jethroe of the Cleveland Buckeyes. All three ballplayers, aware of Yawkey’s and Collins’ views, later claimed to know the tryout was a charade, an event the team held to get a Muchnick off their backs before his campaign affected ticket sales. “We knew we were wasting our time,” Robinson <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=gG_f0ia4Qy0C&amp;pg=PA263&amp;lpg=PA263&amp;dq=%E2%80%9CNobody+was+serious+then+about+black+players+in+the+majors,+except+maybe+a+few+politicians.%E2%80%9D&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=MFfEkhjpL7&amp;sig=s_rP_7Fg65MM-SEhSjIeHlCYDkc&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;v">told the <em>Globe</em></a><em> </em>in 1972. “Nobody was serious then about black players in the majors, except maybe a few politicians.” A 1997 retrospective on the tryout in the <em>Boston Globe </em>reported that someone from the stands interrupted the tryout by shouting, “Get those n---ers off the field!”</p>
<p>The Baseball Hall of Fame reports that <a href="http://baseballhall.org/node/355">the Braves</a> never held their own tryout. Nevertheless, the city’s National League franchise was still allowed to play on Sundays. In 1950, Jethroe would integrate Boston baseball—and win rookie of the year—when the Braves made him their first black player. The integration of the city’s baseball rosters was short-lived: Three years later, the Braves left for Milwaukee, and the Red Sox continued their refusal to bring in black talent.</p>
<p>Despite the epithets and the dim prospects that the Sox would sign anyone who participated in the 1945 tryout, contemporary reports say the players, particularly Robinson, impressed observers. News of the tryouts spread through the black press, eventually reaching Branch Rickey. The Brooklyn Dodgers’ general manager had been pondering integration for some time. Shortly before the Boston tryout, he held a sham tryout of his own in Bear Mountain, New York, with <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/12691678/two-tried-jackie-robinson">two Negro League players</a> who were already 35 and 40 years old—and thus too old to bring to Brooklyn. The reports about Robinson’s play in Boston caught Rickey’s attention. Shortly after the tryout, Rickey asked Wendell Smith to broker an introduction. In August 1945, Rickey signed Robinson to a minor-league contract. He spent a year in the minors before debuting at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947, breaking the major leagues’ color barrier nearly two years to the day after his Fenway workout.</p>
<p>The Red Sox, meanwhile, infamously became the last major league team to integrate, with the signing of infielder Pumpsie Green in 1959. In the years between the 1945 tryout and Green’s signing, Jackie Robinson would win rookie of the year, an MVP award, a batting title, a World Series, and six National League pennants. Around the league, future Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, and Larry Doby all made their debuts.</p>
<p>Robinson and Muchnick remained friends long after the city councilman’s failed effort to bring the future Hall of Famer to Boston. Muchnick’s children described their relationship in Bryant’s book, saying Robinson would visit often when he was in town to play the Braves, and that the two men argued over the 1960 presidential election, in which the ballplayer supported Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy on the grounds that the Republican had done more for civil rights. Later, Robinson would send Muchnick a copy of his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/4871876845/?tag=slatmaga-20">autobiography</a> with the inscription, “To my friend Isadore Muchnick with sincere appreciation for all you meant to my baseball career … Much of it was inspired by your attitudes and beliefs.”</p>
<p>If the Red Sox had signed Robinson in 1945, one imagines the two men might have grown even closer. More importantly, it’s probable that white Boston sports fans would have had a long, memorable lesson in the hatred launched at black athletes. Realistically, though, Muchnick never had a chance. The Robinson tryout, after all, was a farce; Yawkey and Collins were never going to sign a black player. The city, too, subjected its pioneering black basketball to horrific racial abuse. The Celtics were one of three teams to integrate the NBA in 1950 when they drafted <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Cooper_(basketball)">Chuck Cooper</a>. Bill Russell, whom the team drafted in 1956—three years before the Red Sox signed Green—was the league’s first black superstar. “I played for the Celtics, period,” he told his daughter. “I did not play for Boston. I was able to separate the Celtics institution from the city and the fans.”</p>
<p>The fact that fans at Fenway Park gave Adam Jones a standing ovation this week shows the city and its fans have made significant progress in the past 70 years. The fact that the crowd needed to affirm a basic belief in human dignity shows Boston still has a very long way to go.</p>Thu, 04 May 2017 21:17:48 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/the_red_sox_could_ve_signed_jackie_robinson_they_gave_him_a_sham_tryout.htmlSeth Maxon2017-05-04T21:17:48ZThe Red Sox passed on the chance to integrate the major leagues. The franchise is still recovering from that original sin.SportsThe Red Sox Could’ve Signed Jackie Robinson. They Gave Him a Sham Tryout Instead.100170504014baseballracismbostonSeth MaxonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/the_red_sox_could_ve_signed_jackie_robinson_they_gave_him_a_sham_tryout.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe Red Sox could’ve signed Jackie Robinson. They gave him a sham tryout instead:The franchise is still recovering from passing on the chance to integrate the major leagues.Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Getty Images and Fawcett Publications, c1951.Jackie Robinson tried out for the Red Sox in 1945. Would the city be any different today if he’d played in Boston?Mirror-World Messihttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/n_golo_kant_is_the_mirror_world_lionel_messi.html
<p>The best player in the Premier League has scored just two league goals in two seasons. The most dynamic, most exciting individual on the field in pretty much every match he plays in has notched five assists in that time, or about one for every 14 games he plays.</p>
<p>Despite this, Chelsea defensive midfielder N’Golo Kant&eacute; just <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/04/23/pfa-awards-live-will-crowned-player-year/">took home the Professional Footballers’ Association’s Player of the Year Award</a>, making him just the second nonattacker to win the player-voted honor since 2000. The pint-sized Frenchman set on permanent seek-and-destroy mode is soccer’s premier disruptive force, and in the last two years has made a bigger impact on the English game than any goal-scorer.</p>
<p>The two Premier League teams Kant&eacute; has suited up for have lost just eight games out of 70 with him on the field. His Chelsea team has slipped of late but still has a four-point cushion on Tottenham with four games to go in the season. Last year, he led Leicester City to perhaps the least probable title in sporting history. The rest of that team’s starting lineup is still there, including forward Jamie Vardy and last year’s PFA PotY winner Riyad Mahrez. That Kant&eacute;-less bunch has ridden a recent five-game winning streak all the way to 11<sup>th</sup> place.</p>
<p>What makes N’Golo Kant&eacute; such a dominant force? He is the mirror-world Lionel Messi, the immovable object to the other’s irresistible force, with the same otherworldly balance, timing, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_the_Road_Runner">Road Runner–esque</a> ability to accelerate to top speed (or come to a dead stop) in a single step. The difference is that Kant&eacute; uses his skills in the service of destruction. He doesn’t just disrupt. He demoralizes.</p>
<p>Kant&eacute; punishes his opponent’s little mistakes better than anyone else in the world, even the ones you can normally get away with in the professional game. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xaKGX75Cec&amp;t=1m08s">A second’s worth of indecision as passing options are cycled through</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOV7-as2CGI&amp;t=9m29s">a sloppy reception that requires an additional touch to corral</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AVig8UREdQ&amp;t=1m10s">an underhit pass that’s going to get there eventually</a>—all of these invite him to disprove the adage that no player can move faster than the ball. He moves so quickly and reads the game so well that, like the craftiest cinematic villains, he’s always one step ahead of whoever’s supposed to be the hero.</p>
<p>He’s so quick that when the man in possession turns away to shield the ball, Kant&eacute; can literally run circles around him, ducking under the outstretched arm that’s meant to hold him off then using a Charles Barkley–esque understanding of angles and leverage to force larger opponents––he’s listed at 5-foot-7 the way <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/news/story?page=Mag15detour">Danny Almonte was listed as age 12</a>––off the ball and claim it for his own.</p>
<p>Every great defensive midfielder knows how to frustrate the other side’s attack. What sets Kant&eacute; apart from those who share his position is his omnipresence. He tackles, intercepts, fouls, and pesters seemingly every opponent at once. He doesn’t just win the ball in that dangerous and often crowded zone in front of the central defenders but ranges up and across the pitch so he can stifle attacks at their weakest points, punishing those little mistakes wherever he can find them. His nickname should be Visa, because he’s everywhere opposing players want to be. His teammate Eden Hazard has <a href="http://www.espnfc.us/chelsea/story/3076936/eden-hazard-chelseas-ngolo-kante-is-everywhere-and-must-play-with-a-twin">likened having Kant&eacute; in the lineup to playing with twins</a>.</p>
<p>While it’s easy to be in the right spot when you can be everywhere simultaneously, Kant&eacute;’s freedom to roam owes a lot to his teams’ systems. With Leicester, he played next to another conservative midfielder in Danny Drinkwater. At Chelsea, a formation change early in the season by manager Antonio “No Relation” Conte freed Kant&eacute; from a more conservative role that required him to cover the typical area of operations for his position, putting another deep-lying midfielder alongside him and an additional central defender behind, giving him more license to hunt the ball.</p>
<p>For France last summer in the European Championships, Kant&eacute; was limited to that narrow role he was eventually freed from at Chelsea. That division left Les Bleus, in effect, with one Kant&eacute; instead of the Kant&eacute; twins. They still won every match in which he appeared and managed a win, a draw, and a loss––the final to Portugal––in the ones he didn’t.</p>
<p>Portuguese forward Eder’s title-deciding goal was a situation made for Kant&eacute; to snuff out. After Eder holds off center back Laurent Koscielny, <a href="http://youtu.be/4IGCkzKy1rQ">Paul Pogba pulls up his run from behind while Blaise Matuidi hangs back</a> to play a passing lane Eder never sees. Kant&eacute;, we’re left to imagine, would have teleported in from across the field and wrested the ball away as soon as his Portuguese opponent took his first awkward touch away from Koscielny.</p>
<p>Kant&eacute; likely wasn’t on the field for the final because French coach Didier Deschamps was looking to juice his offense against a Portuguese team built to absorb pressure. And while Kant&eacute;’s efforts on the offensive end aren’t as irredeemable as those stats at the top might indicate––players as fast and smart as Kant&eacute; will always have some utility going forward, and his ability to win the ball high up the field makes attacking that much easier for his teammates––there’s something imprecise about his contributions. Consider, for instance, the dazzling run to draw four defenders at the beginning of this video, after which he badly overhits his chip to an open Hazard.</p>
<p>You often see teammates stretching or sliding an extra step to reach Kant&eacute;’s passes, slowing the attack down and leaving them open to the same kinds of mistakes he relishes when his opponents make them. He’s much better at aiming for a general area than the man himself.</p>
<p>Still, if he’s limited and one-dimensional then he’s limited and one-dimensional in the same way <em>Mad Max: Fury Road</em> was. Sometimes you don’t need another dimension, not when your presence has already rearranged the league’s power structure twice.</p>
<p>After this season, every team in the world will want their own version of Kant&eacute;, which could lead to major changes in player development the world over. Players that agile and that smart have been getting turned into <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2013/08/the_american_messi_the_iranian_messi_the_kiwi_messi_and_every_other_messi.html">off-brand Messis</a> for a decade now, giving the world a surplus of in-cutting wingers. If clubs and their academies begin to nudge some of them down the opposite path, we’ll get to see whether Kant&eacute;’s dominance is the result of his singular gifts or a smart allocation of resources.</p>
<p>As for Kant&eacute; himself, his days dominating the Premier League may already be numbered. Rumor has it he’s Real Madrid’s top transfer target for the summer, which means next year Messi could find himself facing off against the only person in the world who could hope to keep up with him: the man in the mirror.</p>Thu, 04 May 2017 13:04:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/n_golo_kant_is_the_mirror_world_lionel_messi.htmlEric Betts2017-05-04T13:04:00ZIn praise of N’Golo Kant&eacute;, soccer’s immovable object.SportsLionel Messi Is the Irresistible Force. N’Golo Kant&eacute; Is the Immovable Object.100170504004soccersportsEric BettsSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/n_golo_kant_is_the_mirror_world_lionel_messi.htmlfalsefalsefalseLionel Messi is the irresistible force. N’Golo Kanté is the immovable object:The Chelsea midfielder uses his skills in the service of destruction.Clive Rose/Getty ImagesN’Golo Kant&eacute; of Chelsea holds off James Ward-Prowse of Southampton during a Premier League match on April 25 in London.Passing the Chemistry Testhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/team_chemistry_is_hard_to_quantify_when_will_sports_teams_figure_it_out.html
<p>What makes a group of athletes greater than the sum of its parts? Is it the knowing glance that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady exchanges with Rob Gronkowski when he looks down the line of scrimmage? Is it the fire that the Chicago Cubs’ Jon Lester mustered after his <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/ct-jon-lester-david-ross-world-series-spt-1025-20161024-story.html">personal catcher David Ross</a> trotted out to the mound to dispense some wisdom in a tense sixth inning?</p>
<p>Team chemistry is the most elusive factor in sports—the “<a href="https://hbr.org/2014/03/team-chemistry-is-the-new-holy-grail-of-performance-analytics">holy grail of performance analytics</a>,” according to <em>Harvard Business Review</em>. It’s only logical that certain teams get along better than others, but how important are these relationships, and can teams optimize them?</p>
<p>The fact that the sports world’s intangibles seem, by definition, immeasurable make them an irresistible challenge for researchers who’ve figured out how to quantify so much of what happens on the field of play. Neuroscientists have claimed to measure chemistry <a href="http://www.sloansportsconference.com/content/using-human-biology-to-measure-team-performance/">through the synchronized heartbeats of teammates</a>. Other researchers have examined <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23mind.html">the correlation of high fives and wins</a>.</p>
<p>The rewards for solving the chemistry riddle are high, in part because maximizing chemistry would come at almost zero cost. If a team could determine that a player would contribute more of a winning attitude than another guy with a similar statistical output, they’d get that chemistry boost for free—at least until other teams figured out how to quantify that extra boon to team spirit.</p>
<p>Professional sports franchises are still a long way away from figuring out how to maximize their players’ ability to work together. Sam Miller, who wrote <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/9749026/oakland-athletics-success-due-player-chemistry-not-metrics-espn-magazine">a feature on team chemistry for <em>ESPN the Magazine</em></a> in 2013, told me that “it’s not like you have 25 guys, therefore you have 25 relationships. You have 25 guys, therefore you have probably billions of relationships.” And Russell Carleton, who <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19606">has written</a> <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=25870">about</a> <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19704">the quantification</a> <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19606">of chemistry</a> for <em>Baseball Prospectus</em>, says major-league clubs haven’t yet come close to “understanding a baseball team as its own little culture.” The economics of baseball ensure that in-house analytics gurus focus more on a player’s hard statistics than something as squirrelly as “clubhouse presence.” At least for now, every team would be advised to build its roster based on wins above replacement rather than, say, <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19944http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19944">the alleged 10 wins’ worth of value that pitcher Brandon McCarthy claimed his teammate Brandon Inge contributed off the field</a>.</p>
<p>In reality, we’re not even particularly close to developing a consensus understanding of what the term <em>chemistry</em> means. Analysts and academics have mountains of player performance data, but these on-field metrics can only carry their research so far. Baseball players spend more time in the relative privacy of locker rooms, dugouts, bullpens, airplanes, and hotel rooms than they do on the field. The limited access researchers have to these spaces means they’re lacking a vital source of quantifiable data. With limited inputs to calculate chemistry, statisticians have to get creative to find something measureable. But what they end up measuring might not actually be chemistry.<a></a></p>
<p>Take the work of Katerina Bezrukova, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Management who has worked with Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association to shed light on chemistry’s role in team performance.<a>*</a> Her research <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/team-spirit/201301/uptons-faultlines-and-team-chemistry">focuses on the demographic “fault lines” in sports</a>, intrateam divisions that develop from differences in teammates’ racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. She claims that teams must strike an optimal balance between diversity and homogeneity and that teams that fall too far on either side of the golden mean win fewer games. In an MLB season, she finds, chemistry is worth about three wins.</p>
<p>Although demographic factors may have some say in how a team gets along, Bezrukova’s research pays little mind to players’ individual personalities. That’s a far more difficult element to harness, but without it you end up with a circuitous definition of chemistry. Bezrukova has found something to measure. It’s just unclear what that something is.</p>
<p>A paper presented at this year’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference leans on a similar crutch. “<a href="http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/1636.pdf">In Search of David Ross</a>,” named for the backup catcher and spiritual leader of the 2016 World Series champion Cubs, takes a stab at quantifying “the indirect impact that an individual player can have on team wins through making their teammates better.” The authors do some messy math to get there, employing a regression model on <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/library/misc/war/"><em>FanGraphs</em>’ wins above replacement statistic</a>. There is on average a 20 percent variance, they report, between a team’s actual win total and the cumulative WAR of all the players on that team. They attribute half of that 20 percent gap to what they call chemistry.</p>
<p>There are plenty of problems with this approach. Carleton and Miller both say such a model, which points to a negative space in the calculation of team performance and works backward to fill it in, risks sweeping a lot of unrelated stuff into the chemistry bucket. Miller points out that analysts have traditionally attributed discrepancies between team wins and cumulative WAR to a team’s relative “clutchness”—that is, random (well, probably random) fluctuations in how similarly skilled players perform in crucial moments throughout the season. Carleton says his concern is that the paper bundles on-field “interaction effects” into chemistry. His example: If shortstop A plays for a team whose pitching staff produces a lot of ground balls, he may have an inflated WAR compared with shortstop B, whose pitching staff generates a lot of fly balls. Shortstop B produces less value for his team because he’s spending a lot of time twiddling his thumbs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he has bad relationships with his teammates or even that he is worse at baseball.</p>
<p>When I brought this up with the authors of the David Ross paper, they said their methods accommodate exactly this sort of scenario. That shortstop who is fielding a lot of infield ground balls? They argue he has good chemistry with his pitchers.</p>
<p>The issue here, then, isn’t that the authors are bad at math. It’s that their version of chemistry—essentially, anything that makes teams better than the players’ individual characteristics might suggest—is not what most of us would call chemistry.</p>
<p>The authors of the paper—a pair of economists at the Chicago Federal Reserve and a professor at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business—found a creative workaround given their lack of access to baseball clubhouses, using publicly available player performance data to take aim at an abstract target. If we wanted to measure chemistry for real, pro baseball would need to function as a laboratory first and a competitive arena second. In this fantasyland, statisticians would have unrestricted access to clubhouse social scenes. They could track what players talked about behind closed doors and how long those conversations lasted. They could also randomize trades, testing out different players in different circumstances. Carleton argues that <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19606">measuring chemistry wouldn’t even be that hard</a> in a world like this one. But sadly for researchers (and happily for players), that level of omniscience and omnipotence isn’t in the offing, at least in this century.</p>
<p><a></a>In the present day, MLB teams use personality exams that <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-diehttps:/www.psychologytoday.com/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die">that have little more validity than a Myers-Briggs test</a>. But more advanced analytics may find their way into front offices soon. Bezrukova has presented her research to general managers, and Carleton also confirmed to me that in-house analysts from various teams are working on measuring chemistry. But even small breakthroughs will be hard to come by when no one knows what to look for. Until we reach a consensus view of what chemistry means, we’ll all just be guessing whether David Ross’ paternal drawl instilled just a touch more confidence in Jon Lester, and how much it matters if it did.</p>
<p><em><strong>Correction, May 2, 2017:</strong> This piece originally misstated that Katerina Bezrukova is a psychology professor at the University of Buffalo. She is a professor&nbsp;at the University at Buffalo School of Management. (<a>Return</a>.)</em></p>Tue, 02 May 2017 15:07:56 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/team_chemistry_is_hard_to_quantify_when_will_sports_teams_figure_it_out.htmlAdam Willis2017-05-02T15:07:56ZWill pro sports teams ever figure out how to quantify how well teammates get along?SportsWill Pro Sports Teams Ever Figure Out How to Quantify How Well Teammates Get Along?100170502004sportsbaseballstatisticsAdam WillisSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/05/team_chemistry_is_hard_to_quantify_when_will_sports_teams_figure_it_out.htmlfalsefalsefalseWill sports teams ever figure out how to quantify how well teammates get along?Team chemistry is the “holy grail of performance analytics.”Jon Durr/Getty ImagesDavid Ross, right, congratulates Jon Lester for pitching a complete game for the win against the Los Angeles Dodgers on June 1 in Chicago.Still a White Man’s Sporthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/04/seventy_years_after_jackie_robinson_mlb_is_still_a_white_man_s_sport.html
<p>My love of baseball comes from summers spent in Idabel, Oklahoma, with my grandfather. We would throw the ball back and forth as he told me stories of traveling hours to see Willard Brown and Satchel Paige play for the Kansas City Monarchs. My grandfather told me that the style of play in the Negro Leagues was much different from that in the all-white majors.&nbsp; Paige, a slender 6-foot-4, would <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kyrTD0yYBAI/T5hIMRdClxI/AAAAAAAAALk/OPTnf69lAI0/s640/D9RPjPzX.jpg">lift his front leg high into the sky</a>, delay his windup for a split second, and then throw the ball with incredible velocity and pinpoint accuracy. He was also <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/10/books/the-legend-of-satchel-paige.html">known for calling in his outfielders</a> and telling his infielders to sit down before striking out the side.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.kansascity.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/sam-mellinger/article18887139.html">Speaking to the <em>Kansas City Star</em></a>, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick lamented that “part of what kept Satchel Paige out of the big leagues so long was he was too charismatic of a player.” Only inhabiting a black body could keep a man with so much talent as Paige traveling what <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Satchel-Life-Times-American-Legend/dp/0812977971">he called</a> the “peanut circuit.” This weekend will mark the 70<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Jackie Robinson integrating Major League Baseball. It is an important event that should be celebrated, but we should do so critically—for while baseball’s powers that be allowed black bodies into the sport, they were not as welcoming to black culture.</p>
<p>Black culture is American culture, and the flamboyance of players in the Negro Leagues was a major part of why that great American institution was so beloved. Unfortunately, as black athletes integrated baseball, major-league players and fans did not embrace much of what made the Negro Leagues unique. Many teams, for instance, warmed up by miming baseball moves with great flamboyance, a practice known as playing “<a href="http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/baseball/shadowball/oneil.html">shadow ball</a>.” Players in the Negro Leagues wowed the crowds with their convincing reactions to balls that were, in fact, not there. But when they made it to the majors, shadow ball ceased to exist.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/sports/baseball/world-series-2014-kansas-city-royals-monarchs-negro-leagues.html?_r=0">William Rhoden noted in the <em>New York Times</em> in 2014</a>, Robinson didn’t leave the style of the Negro Leagues behind when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. His “speed and daring,” particularly his steals of home, were a trademark of black baseball. “At that time, [white] baseball was a base-to base thing,” Negro Leagues legend Buck O’Neil <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Ohi8CFRudkMC&amp;lpg=PT105&amp;ots=utpmReq0xz&amp;dq=%E2%80%9Cbaseball%20was%20a%20base-to%20base%20thing%22&amp;pg=PT105#v=onepage&amp;q=%E2%80%9Cbaseball%20was%20a%20base-to%20base%20thing%22&amp;f=false">said in an interview for Ken Burns’ documentary <em>Baseball</em></a><em>.</em> “But in our baseball … if you walked, you stole second … you actually scored runs without a hit.” Robinson’s aggression on the base paths infuriated his opponents, particularly the white ones. Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Russ Meyer, annoyed at watching Robinson dance off third base, yelled, “Go ahead you nigger, try to steal.” Robinson did try. He was safe at home.</p>
<p>&quot;Negro League players threatened the established racial order,” Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African and African American studies at Duke University, told me recently, “not only in terms of taking actual jobs from white ballplayers but in developing a style of play that would transform how the game was played.” It wasn’t just black players that threatened the white-dominated major leagues. A 1960 piece in <em>Sports Illustrated</em> noted that Latin players were considered “hot dogs.” The definition, according to <em>SI</em>: a “player who calls attention to himself, either through his actions or his attitude.” The magazine also quoted an anonymous white player. “You automatically assume any Latin is a hot dog until he proves himself otherwise,” he said.</p>
<p>Nearly 60 years later, that belief is still all too prevalent. In April 2015, Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodgersnow/la-sp-dn-dodgers-yasiel-puig-cut-bat-flips-20150414-story.html">told the <em>Los Angeles Times</em></a> that he was going to try to stop flipping his bat into the air after he hit home runs. “I want to show American baseball that I’m not disrespecting the game,” he said. Yet, the Cuban star also added, “If it’s a big home run or if I’m frustrated because I couldn’t connect in my previous at-bats or if I drive in important runs for my team, I might do it. You never know.”</p>
<p>It’s painful to hear a star player with a buoyant personality declare that he’ll try to fit in by curtailing his natural exuberance. Why did Puig feel that kind of pressure? Because white players like Bud Norris, who now pitches for the Los Angeles Angels, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2015/09/30/mlb-bench-clearing-brawls-unwritten-rules-ethnic-backgrounds/73066892/">say things like this</a>: “We’re opening this game to everyone that can play. However, if you’re going to come into our country and make our American dollars, you need to respect a game that has been here for over a hundred years.” In other words, you can play in our country, but you must adhere to our (largely white) expectations. When you hit a home run, lay your bat down gently. Smile if you want … but don’t show any teeth.</p>
<p>It is a form of cultural colonialization to allow a player to display his athletic brilliance but to prevent him from bringing his culture to the game. Yes, major-league games take place in American cities, but people from around the world populate these ball clubs. That’s why the World Baseball Classic was such a joy to watch. The moment when Cubs second baseman Javier Baez, playing for Team Puerto Rico, celebrated a no-look tag before the play was over wouldn’t have happened in the majors without <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO9iRk8MYbY">consequences and repercussions</a>.</p>
<p>For me, though, there was something quintessentially American about this Puerto Rican player laughing and pointing as he tagged out his Dominican opponent. This was the game I grew up hearing about from my grandfather, a man who spoke in glowing terms about the joy black players displayed on the field. </p>
<p>Jackie Robinson may have integrated Major League Baseball 70 years ago, but it was, and continues to be, a white man’s sport. The World Baseball Classic gave us a glimpse of what baseball could be, if only we allowed the men who play it to express the fullness of their humanity.</p>Fri, 14 Apr 2017 16:49:29 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/04/seventy_years_after_jackie_robinson_mlb_is_still_a_white_man_s_sport.htmlLawrence Ware2017-04-14T16:49:29ZSeventy years after Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball, the game has yet to embrace black culture.SportsSeventy Years After Jackie Robinson, Major League Baseball Is Still a White Man’s Sport100170414012sportsbaseballLawrence WareSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/04/seventy_years_after_jackie_robinson_mlb_is_still_a_white_man_s_sport.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe game has yet to embrace black culture.Seventy years after Jackie Robinson, Major League Baseball is still a white man’s sport:Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Bob Sandberg/Library of Congress, Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images Sport.Jackie Robinson in 1954, left, and Adam Jones of the U.S. team at the 2017 World Baseball Classic game against the Dominican Republic in Miami on March 11.Tony Romo Got Out While He Was Still Alivehttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/04/in_praise_of_tony_romo_who_got_out_while_he_was_still_alive.html
<p>Were he to reflect upon his professional sports career from the standpoint of a trophy wife, Tony Romo could never complain of mistreatment from the consummate sugar daddy, Jerry Jones.</p>
<p>The billionaire Dallas Cowboys owner provided his quarterback with the ultimate playhouse, that oh-so-ostentatious Taj Mahal of the prairie that’s called AT&amp;T Stadium. He also stocked the pond with what many pundits insist is the biggest and most brutish offensive line in the annals of the National Football League, and he brought in a local radio analyst, Babe Laufenberg, to act as Romo’s full-time apologist. In Babe’s mind, no interception was ever Romo’s fault—the receiver “didn’t finish his route.” While quarterbacks with names like Manning and Brady lit up the football field on Super Sunday, Romo busted his ass at the pro-am golf event at Pebble Beach. Jones never complained. Not publicly, at least.</p>
<p>Alas, all September-January relationships must come to an end. That day typically happens on or about the trophy’s 35<sup>th</sup> birthday, whereupon he is replaced with a younger, sleeker, shinier version. Through no fault of his own, the 36-year-old Romo—tiptoeing to reach for the Super Bowl ring that seemed so near his grasp—got ousted by Dak Prescott, the new kid with the prettier smile.</p>
<p>If Romo didn’t see this one coming, he should have. Now, instead of starting over in some less Taj Mahal–ish stadium, the Cowboys QB with the balky back is <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/19073822/dallas-cowboys-qb-tony-romo-leaving-football-broadcast-career">riding off to the CBS broadcast booth</a>, where the only people who can hurt him are football fans with Twitter accounts. Meanwhile, those of us in Dallas are left to contemplate the ultimate nonending to a flamboyant and perpetually entertaining career.</p>
<p>By invoking the retirement option, the relentlessly cheerful Romo may have made it easier to maintain a selfless, take-one-for-the-team pose. But who knows, really? The undrafted nobody <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/news/romos-college-coach-pleased-decision-154615132--ncaaf.html">from someplace called Eastern Illinois</a>—a place most people might have properly assumed was located at the bottom of a lake—never did let people in. “I think it burns Romo to no end that the Cowboys played so well last season and he didn’t get to be a part of it,” Kevin Sherrington, a sports columnist for the<em> Dallas Morning News</em>, told me. “I think he was dying to say, ‘If you think what Dak did was impressive, you should have seen what I could have done with this team.’ He’d think, and rightfully so, that the offense with him would have been far more sophisticated. I’d have guessed that Romo would have taken an opportunity in Houston or Denver to go and get the ring. But as for Tony, few people really know him. He’s a closed shop.”</p>
<p>Now the closed shop has locked its doors and hung a hand-lettered sign that reads, “Closed Until Further Notice—Like Forever.” Romo’s lasting playoff legacy will consist of a <a href="https://www.si.com/nfl/2014/10/08/tony-romo-dallas-cowboys-seattle-seahawks-bill-parcells-mike-holmgren">botched snap on a field goal at Seattle</a> and a game-winning–turned–game-losing throw to Dez Bryant at Green Bay that got <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2017/01/12/dez-bryant-catch-controversy-dallas-green-bay-packers-playoffs/96504020/">overturned by Roger Goodell’s replay booth goons</a>.</p>
<p>Despite the apparent unfairness of all that, Romo might now well be thinking, “Screw the ring. This is the happiest day of my life.”</p>
<p>There are probably some cadavers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School that have been cut on fewer times than Tony Romo. With his back yielding relentless agonies, Romo often found sleep an elusive objective. Slightly beneath the polished surface of the swell day-to-day existence of the franchise QB—man, it must be nice to play that pro-am at Pebble Beach—is the pain of a career spent getting slammed to the turf. Romo, who’s collected paychecks for more than a decade, is one of the lucky ones. In the NFL, you toe the line, pay the price, endure the sacrifices, and for what? To wake up one fine day to discover you’ve been traded to Buffalo.</p>
<p>It’s hard to fault Romo’s chosen career path, especially given that there’s a fine tradition of trading a silver-and-blue helmet for a network blazer. Ex-Dallas quarterbacks tend to excel in the TV booth. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Meredith#Professional_career">Dandy Don Meredith</a>, like Romo, retired from the game in what most observers felt was a premature gesture and he made out just fine.</p>
<p>ABC’s <em>Monday Night Football</em> came to<em> </em>Dallas for the first time on Nov. 16, 1970. That night, the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Cowboys, 38–0. Late in the game, the Cotton Bowl crowd began to shout toward the press box, “We want Meredith! We want Meredith!”</p>
<p>Meredith was perfectly happy to stay where he was. “They’re not going to get me back out there,” he told Howard Cosell.</p>
<p>Troy Aikman, who picked up three of those cherished Super Bowl rings, has found a similarly comfortable sinecure working alongside Joe Buck at Fox. Aikman insists that he anguishes over the prospect of making an on-the-air miscue. But at least he can still remember his name the morning after.</p>
<p>So now, in Dallas, it’s goodbye Tony and hello Dak. While the 23-year-old Prescott may not realize it yet, he too will be replaced by a newer and sexier model before he thinks he’s done. A potential candidate might well have been on display last December at AT&amp;T Stadium during the Texas high school state championship game. The winning team was quarterbacked by <a href="http://sportsday.dallasnews.com/high-school/high-schools/2016/12/19/5-things-know-highland-park-qb-john-stephen-jones-jerry-jones-grandson">a kid named John Stephen Jones</a>—Jerry Jones’ grandson. If grandpa lives long enough, he’ll push aside his own kin, too, as soon as the time is right.</p>Wed, 05 Apr 2017 20:31:11 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/04/in_praise_of_tony_romo_who_got_out_while_he_was_still_alive.htmlMike Shropshire2017-04-05T20:31:11ZThe Cowboys quarterback will be a whole lot safer in the broadcast booth than he was on the football field.SportsIn Praise of Tony Romo, Who Got Out While He Was Still Alive100170405018nflfootballMike ShropshireSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/04/in_praise_of_tony_romo_who_got_out_while_he_was_still_alive.htmlfalsefalsefalseIn praise of Tony Romo, who got out while he was still alive:The Cowboys quarterback will be a whole lot safer in the broadcast booth than he was on the football field.Andrew Dieb/Icon Sportswire/Corbis via Getty ImagesTony Romo yells at the offense during the NFL game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Cowboys at AT&amp;T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Nov. 8, 2015.One Month, Every Stadiumhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/how_to_visit_all_30_major_league_ballparks_in_30_days.html
<p>This year, the national pastime will move at a slightly faster pace. Instead of having to toss four balls to the side of the plate to intentionally walk a batter, major-league <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18737245/mlb-union-agree-get-rid-traditional-intentional-walkwill-use-signal-dugout">teams can now indicate to the umpire</a> that they’d like to allow an opposing hitter to take a leisurely walk to first. This practice is projected to save about one minute each time it’s used—minus whatever delays are caused when confused fans and players struggle to figure out what’s going on. Since an intentional walk happens roughly once every 2.6 games, expect the average game to speed up 23 seconds as a result.</p>
<p>If that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, consider that even a single minute can be a make-or-break proposition for some (crazy) fans.</p>
<p>In 2013, my friend Ben and I embarked on a 30-game baseball road trip, visiting each of the 30 major-league stadiums in a whirlwind 30 days. The rules were simple, or so he assured me: We had to be present for an entire game at every park, arriving before the first pitch and not leaving until the last. Our schedule allowed for games to last four hours (parking lot entries and escapes included), leaving us just enough time for a little sleep and a lot of 1,000-plus-mile drives. Due to some unforeseen acts of God (rain, mostly) and some unforeseen acts of stupidity (changing the clock to adjust for time zones) we ended up leaving ourselves a 16-hour window to drive what (according to Google Maps) was the more-than-16-hour trip from Houston to Chicago to attend our final game. One speeding ticket later, we managed to get there in the nick of time.</p>
<p>If you follow this year’s <strong><em>Slate</em></strong> road trip calculator and set your clocks correctly, you (hopefully) won’t have to rely on such slim margins. The calculator above lets you pick any starting city and a range of starting dates. Given those parameters, it will spit out a road trip that will take you to a game in all 30 ballparks. The exact rules are discussed in <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/05/baseball_road_trip_how_to_visit_all_30_mlb_stadiums_in_30_days.html">previous</a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/04/baseball_road_trip_use_slate_s_itinerary_generator_to_map_a_30_day_trip.html">versions</a> of this calculator, but there is one important note for 2017: Because of the new intentional walk rule, a typical 30-game road trip will now feature 12 fewer minutes of baseball. In total, you can expect to see 46 fewer pitches. But as we discovered on our trip, and as we wrote about in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802122744/?tag=slatmaga-20">our book</a>, after driving 20,000-plus miles on the road and watching 4,123 pitches zoom across home plate, you won’t even know what you’ve missed.</p>
<p><strong><em>*Correction, March 31, 2017: </em></strong><em>This interactive originally misidentified Guaranteed Rate Field as U.S. Cellular Field. </em></p>Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:15:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/how_to_visit_all_30_major_league_ballparks_in_30_days.htmlBen BlattEric Brewster2017-03-31T13:15:00ZOur guide to visiting all 30 major-league ballparks in 30 days, updated for 2017.SportsHow to Visit All 30 Major-League Ballparks in 30 Days100170331006baseballBen BlattEric BrewsterSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/how_to_visit_all_30_major_league_ballparks_in_30_days.htmlfalsefalsefalseOur guide to visiting all 30 major-league ballparks in 30 days, updated for 2017:Our guide to cobbling together the ultimate baseball road trip.Congratulations on Winning the World Series, Cubshttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/congratulations_on_winning_the_world_series_cubs_building_a_dynasty_is_a.html
<p>It sounds like a <a href="https://youtu.be/bvEexTomE1I">Ringo Starr song</a>, but in fact it was Anton Chekhov who wrote that of all endeavors in life, “only entropy comes easy.” The Chicago Cubs of Theo Epstein, Jed Hoyer, and Joe Maddon, having won the franchise’s first championship since 1908, will commence a title defense that will succeed only if it defies Chekhov’s maxim and resists the tendency of even the best baseball teams to break apart.</p>
<p>The Cubs have talent, brains, and a carefully articulated plan for success, all of which represent a huge departure from most Cubs teams of the previous 108 years. (It’s a fruitless task to try to name <a href="http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12968">the last great Cubs front office</a> <em>prior</em> to Epstein and Hoyer, the team’s current president of baseball operations and general manager.) The franchise’s strategy in the Epstein and Hoyer era has been centered on creating a winning culture by developing a high-quality farm system and emphasizing the character of the players the team acquires. These talented young hitters and pitchers would be paid cost-effective pre-arbitration and free-agent salaries, and they would come with Cubs software—management’s combination of philosophical and practical approaches to baseball—installed in their brains via coaching, the use of advanced technology in training, and a proprietary manual whose first edition ran 259 pages. Sayeth the manual:</p>
<blockquote>
The Cubs
<strong> </strong>attitude is positive, powerful, action-oriented, and resilient. It is an attitude that says, “I am” and “I do.” It is an attitude that says, “No matter what happens, I will continue to grow, and I will always find a way.”
</blockquote>
<p>In Tom Verducci’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0804190011/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>The Cubs Way</em></a>, a well-reported but hagiographic account of the team’s championship season, we observe Epstein, Hoyer, and the field manager Maddon serve that plan almost unerringly. Players acquired via trade, such as first baseman Anthony Rizzo, are both men of high character and men who produce on the field, as are draftees such as 2013’s No. 2 overall pick, Kris Bryant. Further additions such as Addison Russell—a top shortstop prospect with the Oakland A’s whose maturation required projection rather than faith—and failed Baltimore Orioles starting pitcher Jake Arrieta—who demanded the reverse—not only worked out well but <em>extremely </em>well. As Epstein told Verducci, to rebuild the club quickly, “We knew we had to hit at an awfully high rate.”</p>
<p>To their credit, they did. However, when assessing the sustainability of this approach—that is, the likelihood that the Cubs will realize their dynastic ambitions and build a team that wins a fistful of championship rings—it’s important to scrutinize the times they didn’t hit. Those instances are largely glossed over in Verducci’s account, but they reveal just how easily things can go wrong even for the highest-functioning team in Major League Baseball and the extent to which luck protected the 2016 World Series champs from their errors.</p>
<p>Consider the case of Russell Martin. The Cubs put in a bid to sign the free agent catcher before the 2015 season, only to be rebuffed when the native Canadian signed with Toronto for five years and $89 million. Martin, who going in to 2015 was coming off his best season in six years, hasn’t been able to duplicate that success with the Blue Jays and will likely to continue to decline going forward. His presence in Chicago last year likely would have blocked rookie catcher Willson Contreras, who hit .282 with a .357 on-base percentage and a .488 slugging percentage in 76 games after a mid-June promotion. It was Martin’s desire to play in his home country, not Cubs management’s innate brilliance, that saved them from a blunder that would have hurt the franchise in multiple ways.</p>
<p>Similarly, the Cubs could afford to sign Jon Lester in December 2014 because Masahiro Tanaka had turned them down the previous January. Tanaka has been successful with the New York Yankees, but Lester has been the better, more durable pitcher over the last two seasons.</p>
<p>A passing reference to failed second base/center field prospect Arismendy Alc&aacute;ntara also shows how human fallibility can disrupt future plans. Alc&aacute;ntara was signed by the Cubs out of the Dominican Republic as a 17-year-old in 2008, long before Epstein came on the scene. Beginning in 2012, <em>Baseball America </em>ranked him among the team’s top 10 prospects for three straight years. The Cubs called him up in July 2014. “At the time we were excited about Alc&aacute;ntara,” Hoyer tells Verducci.</p>
<p>While the transient nature of Hoyer’s affections goes unexplored, the record tells the story: Given 70 games in the majors, Alc&aacute;ntara didn’t hit and largely hasn’t hit since. “I think he started doubting himself,” Jason McLeod, the team’s vice president of scouting and player development, <a href="http://www.csnchicago.com/chicago-cubs/cubs-hoping-arismendy-alcantara-can-hit-reset-button-2016">told CSN Chicago</a>. Last June, the Cubs traded him to the Oakland A’s in exchange for veteran utility man Chris Coghlan, a 31-year-old who was then hitting .146. The trade was a surrender. Neither the manual nor enlightened coaching nor the player’s innate skill had helped rescue Alc&aacute;ntara.</p>
<p>This will always be the fate of some prospects, even those identified as good players by baseball minds as perceptive as those that run the Cubs. Under Epstein and Hoyer, the Cubs have largely been shielded from the failure of any one prospect, as they’ve been able to acquire bushels of young talent. The team’s margin for error is about to become much thinner, though, as Major League Baseball punishes the Cubs for their successes by handing them less valuable draft picks and a smaller pool of money to sign international players.</p>
<p>The Cubs’ strategy under Epstein has been predicated on building via the high draft picks that go to the teams with the league’s worst records. (The Cubs lost 87 or more games every season between 2010 and 2014.) While most clubs jump on pitching early in the draft, Epstein has not tabbed a pitcher in the first round during his tenure in Chicago. “We can get anybody to pitch,” Verducci quotes Epstein as saying, and, at least for 2016, he was right: Verducci notes the Cubs used 11 pitchers in the World Series, every one of them acquired from outside the organization. But that strategy was abetted by the fact that the Cubs nabbed power hitters such as Bryant and Kyle Schwarber at the top of the draft. The odds that the same caliber of players will be around at No. 27 (where the Cubs are picking this June) aren’t nearly as good, and the Cubs’ chances of continuing to have William Tell–level accuracy both in the draft and with veteran pitching acquisitions are slim.</p>
<p>A diminished talent pipeline will put additional pressure on another tenet of the Cubs’ philosophy. “Epstein looked for an edge over the rest of baseball,” Verducci writes, “in the character of his players.” Hooray for good intentions. The Cubs temporized on character in 2016 when they acquired Aroldis Chapman, who <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/14878838/aroldis-chapman-new-york-yankees-suspended-30-games">had been suspended for 30 games</a> under the sport’s domestic violence policy during his tenure with the New York Yankees. This was a betrayal of the franchise’s stated values, expedient because of Chapman’s status as one of the best relievers in major-league history. Talent has superseded moral posturing going back to the earliest days of professional baseball, and it always will.</p>
<p>While the Cubs are better or smarter than other teams in some areas, when it comes to bottom-line considerations, they are just like the rest, with all of the attendant vulnerabilities and possibilities for error. The front office’s greatest miss is perhaps the best indicator of how the Cubs might hurt themselves going forward. The complete destruction of Jason Heyward’s hitting mechanics is barely discussed in <em>The Cubs Way</em> except as a counterpoint to Heyward’s own big character moment, which came when he rallied the team during the rain delay near the end of Game 7 of the World Series. An outstanding defensive outfielder whose bat was always a little light for an outfield corner, Heyward reached free agency at the unusually young age of 25. In December 2015, the Cubs signed him to an eight-year, $184 million contract.</p>
<p>Right move, right player, wrong outcome: Heyward batted .230 with an on-base percentage of .305 and a .325 slugging percentage in the regular season, and he was so lost in October (he went 5 for 48) that Maddon benched him. At present, he’s reworking his swing. While spring training statistics should be taken with a shovel full of salt, the early results are not promising. Regardless, Heyward will be part of the Cubs’ picture through 2023, either on the field, on the bench, or as a vampire sucking salary from the team budget. This can and will happen again.</p>
<p>Entropy is already pulling at the Cubs in other ways. Center field Dexter Fowler is gone, and his replacements, Albert Almora and Jon Jay, are almost certain <a href="https://www.fanragsports.com/mlb/cubs/ctbnl-center-field-rare-cubs-weak-spot/">not to perform at the same level</a> that Fowler did last season. (To be clear, neither was Fowler—that’s why this stuff is hard.) Serviceable fifth starter Jason Hammel finished the season in a tailspin and has departed for Kansas City. His spot is being taken by a combination of left-handers Mike Montgomery and Brett Anderson, the first of whom has yet to succeed as a starter while the second has stayed healthy through a full campaign just twice in the last eight years. Starting pitchers Lester, Arrieta, and John Lackey are a year further into their 30s, and the latter two are unsigned after this season, as is closer Wade Davis. He replaces Chapman, who has returned to the Yankees, grumbling about the way Maddon rode him in the playoffs. So much for team above self. Due to the club’s hitting-first drafting strategy, high-value replacements aren’t necessarily on hand if these pitchers leave or age out of usefulness.</p>
<p>Most dangerous of all to the Cubs is the affection management and players feel for each other, a heartwarming aspect of the team that is contraindicated when it comes to sustaining a winning run. They love Rizzo. They love Schwarber. Epstein says of Bryant, “If we have daughters, that’s the guy we’d like her to marry.” Although Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith traded Joe Cronin, a future Hall of Fame shortstop who <em>was</em> married to his daughter, more often than not sentimentality gets in the way of a successful baseball operation. Are you going to be willing to trade your best pal (or your son-in-law) if he’s hitting .220?</p>
<p>As general manager of the Red Sox, Epstein had the audacity to trade Nomar Garciaparra in the midst of the 2004 pennant race. If he retains that same level of ruthlessness, then sentimentality won’t be a huge problem for the Cubs. The four other teams in the National League Central also don’t seem likely to give Chicago a strong run for the division title in 2017, so a postseason encore is likely this year. After that, the centrifugal force will become even stronger as the team’s young players ride the salary escalator upward. Some of those youngsters may fail—as good as Javier Baez is on defense, if he remains a .231/.268/.367 hitter against right-handers, the Cubs will eventually move on—as will seemingly “safe” veterans, such as Heyward, who will fall off a cliff for some unforeseen reason.</p>
<p>At that point, the only thing that will keep the Cubs on top will be the kind of ruthless self-assessment that led to them shelving their values and acquiring Chapman. One lesson to draw from the Cubs’ way (as opposed to <em>The Cubs Way</em>) is that to succeed against tough competition, you have to be willing to shelve your ideology.</p>Fri, 31 Mar 2017 09:54:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/congratulations_on_winning_the_world_series_cubs_building_a_dynasty_is_a.htmlSteven Goldman2017-03-31T09:54:00ZBuilding a dynasty is a whole lot harder.SportsCongratulations on Winning the World Series, Cubs. Building a Dynasty Is a Whole Lot Harder.100170331002sportsbaseballbooksslate book reviewsbr417Steven GoldmanSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/congratulations_on_winning_the_world_series_cubs_building_a_dynasty_is_a.htmlfalsefalsefalseCongratulations on winning the World Series, Cubs. Building a dynasty is a lot harder:It’s very easy for things to go wrong, even for the highest functioning team in Major League Baseball.Dylan Buell/Getty ImagesCubs General Manager Jed Hoyer, left, and President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein during the World Series victory parade on Nov. 4 in Chicago.These Guys Are Goodhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/bruce_arena_has_transformed_the_u_s_national_soccer_team_into_an_aggressive.html
<p>For the second time in a year, the U.S. men’s national team found itself facing a not-technically-must-win-but-pretty-much-must-win game to keep its hopes of qualifying for its eighth straight World Cup alive.</p>
<p>The mood was grim. The team was dead last in the final round of CONCACAF qualifying, limping into&nbsp;Friday’s&nbsp;match against Honduras without injured starters DeAndre Yedlin, Bobby Wood, and Fabian Johnson. The U.S. was also breaking in a new (old) coach tasked with rousing a team that had four months to stew in the collective ignominy of November,&nbsp;when tactical miscalculations and&nbsp;ill-considered motivational ploys&nbsp;from a home loss against Mexico gave way to cascading individual errors in an embarrassing 4–0 away defeat to Costa Rica. Whatever optimism that remained among American fans was based on a belief that the team’s supposedly better-than-the-continental-competition talent would ultimately prevail.</p>
<p>The United States’ 6–0 destruction of a talented but struggling Honduras squad was about as thorough of a rejection of that doom and gloom as possible, an unequivocal reassurance that the book had been closed on the J&uuml;rgen Klinsmann era. So much enthusiasm came surging back so fast that you’d be forgiven for thinking the U.S. was now the World Cup favorite.</p>
<p>In Bruce Arena’s first competitive match as U.S. manager since 2006, his team played at a level it never achieved under Klinsmann. Arena is always quick to downplay his own tactical savvy, but the<a href="https://twitter.com/shinguardian/status/845521227514990592"> consensus was this U.S. team displayed more purpose and clarity</a> in individual roles, and in how those individuals coalesced into a teamwide sense of purpose. Simply put, the players seemed to know what they were doing. Klinsmann’s teams toggled between sitting deep on defense and trying to keep possession of the ball on offense, because he was perhaps the last coach in the world to realize that possession is a defensive weapon rather than an offensive one. What his teams lacked was penetration, the ability to get the ball consistently into dangerous spots with targets who could take advantage of those opportunities. At times, the offensive game plan seemed to be to give Clint Dempsey the ball and let him figure it out. Without that option in Costa Rica in November, the U.S. managed just a single shot on target.</p>
<p>The U.S. still fed Dempsey with regularity&nbsp;on Friday. It’s not a bad plan. The 34-year-old, playing his first international match after being diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat in August, tallied a hat trick that brought him within&nbsp;two of Landon Donovan’s all-time U.S. scoring record. But Arena also cajoled a huge number of Dempsey’s teammates into becoming the best possible versions of themselves. There was Jozy Altidore receiving the ball with his back to goal and channeling his inner Bill Walton as he picked out runners, Darlington Nagbe escaping pressure as one might solve a chess problem then slaloming across the field to scramble the defense, and Christian Pulisic—still only 18—seeing and raising fans’ insanely high expectations.</p>
<p>Pulisic scored once, played two audacious and well-taken assists, hit the shot that was parried into the path of Sebastian Lletget for another goal, and drew the foul that let Clint Dempsey complete his hat trick with a free-kick goal. The only one of the six goals he didn’t play a part in was Michael Bradley’s long-range rocket, which no one played a part in because Bradley had an entire stadium’s worth of space to himself when he dribbled a diagonal across the field then hit his shot into the lower-right corner.</p>
<p>The fear in the hour between the announcement of the lineup and kickoff was that it would be too much, too soon to throw Pulisic into the center with the keys to the entire U.S. offense. Even if he has been playing centrally more often with Borussia Dortmund, the German club’s roster is filled with quick, technical, creative players that could help relieve some of the playmaking burden. Would Pulisic be ready to shoulder more of that burden, meshing his game with the creative-in-a-different-way Dempsey, Altidore, and Bradley?</p>
<p>The early returns on Friday weren’t great; <a href="https://twitter.com/MLSAnalyst/status/845474387763462144">Pulisic had some bad turnovers</a> before he settled in and lorded over the game. But Arena apparently never doubted that the 18-year-old could lead the U.S. national team. His initial roster for the games against Honduras and Panama featured neither Sacha Kljestan nor Benny Feilhaber, the pair of veteran attacking midfielders who spent most (in Kljestan’s case) and all (in Feilhaber’s) of Klinsmann’s tenure frozen out. (Kljestan did end up joining the squad as an injury replacement for Wood.)</p>
<p>Arena’s roster favored defenders, runners, and savvy veterans. It was a team constructed to grind its opponents into submission. For some, this was <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexiLalas/status/842101139730386944">a good thing</a>. For others, <a href="https://twitter.com/PhilSchoen/status/844011416566882304">it was too pragmatic</a>. If anything, that’s what Klinsmann was—a manager who valued the point that came from a draw more than the additional two that came with a win.</p>
<p>Arena, though, took that roster and constructed a lineup that was as aggressive as logic and good sense allowed. It was a move that caught Honduras off guard. Like every other opponent the U.S. has played for the past two years, Honduras started the game determined to press Michael Bradley at every opportunity, seeking to cut off the supply to the attacking players. Since moving to a deep-lying role, Bradley has always served as a safety valve for the U.S., and sometimes his teammates exploited that a little too readily, overloading him with passes that put him under immediate duress.</p>
<p>Klinsmann’s solution was to put more defensive cover around Bradley to help clean up his mistakes.&nbsp;On Friday, Arena made sure the U.S. had more options to transition from defense to attack. Hound the U.S. captain too aggressively and you’d have Nagbe bursting into space with the ball at his feet or the 6-foot-3 Geoff Cameron pushing up to serve as a target right back against an overmatched winger. Combine this improved transition game with an in-form offense, and Honduras had no choice but to ease off. Bradley played just a single errant pass after the 18<sup>th</sup> minute.</p>
<p>It won’t always be this easy. Honduras was not good on Friday, failing to take advantage of some opportunities gifted to them by poor defensive rotation. The U.S. is still in fourth in the final round of CONCACAF qualifying, and if they end up in that same position, they’d be forced to travel halfway around the world to face an Asian hopeful in a playoff to make the World Cup. And it’s unlikely the team will find its away fixture against Panama on Tuesday night as welcoming, especially without starting central defender John Brooks, who was sent home after having to be subbed off on Friday.</p>
<p>Still, even if the U.S. won’t hit those heights every game—no team could—the benchmark set against Honduras will be one for the team to aspire to for the rest of Arena’s tenure. That includes, if the U.S. national team can keep even a portion of this up, the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Friday showed that the talent is there. Now the U.S. has a manager who knows what to do with it.</p>Mon, 27 Mar 2017 17:49:12 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/bruce_arena_has_transformed_the_u_s_national_soccer_team_into_an_aggressive.htmlEric Betts2017-03-27T17:49:12ZUnder Bruce Arena, the U.S. men’s national soccer team has transformed from an embarrassment into an aggressive attacking force.SportsHooray, the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team Is No Longer a Total Embarrassment!100170327007sportssoccerEric BettsSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/bruce_arena_has_transformed_the_u_s_national_soccer_team_into_an_aggressive.htmlfalsefalsefalseHooray, the U.S. men’s national soccer team is no longer a total embarrassment!With the help of Christian Pulisic, Bruce Arena has transformed the USMNT into an aggressive attacking force.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesChristian Pulisic celebrates after scoring a goal against Honduras during the U.S.’s FIFA 2018 World Cup Qualifier at Avaya Stadium on Friday in San Jose, California.The Ballad of Illinois Statehttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/how_the_ncaa_abuses_statistics_to_stack_the_deck_against_small_schools_like.html
<p>This year, as it has every season since 1981, the selection committee for the NCAA men’s basketball committee relied on something called the <a href="http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-men/d1/ncaa-mens-basketball-rpi">Rating Percentage Index</a> as its primary analytical tool to pick the teams and seed the field. The RPI was a useful tool in 1981, when computer rankings were far more rudimentary. But in the three-plus decades since, many folks—<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2011/03/ratings_madness.html">including myself</a>—have noted the metric’s flaws. For one thing, the RPI doesn’t account for a team’s margin of victory. The strength of schedule component is also quite primitive, as it’s mostly based on an opponent’s record. This allows shrewd schedulers to game the system by loading up on teams that are weaker than their record indicates.</p>
<p>Now the good news: In January, the NCAA invited me and several other people <a href="http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/18468008/ncaa-tournament-officials-meet-analytics-experts-consider-creating-new-metric">to discuss using new metrics to support the tournament selection process</a>. It is encouraging that the people in charge of men’s basketball at the NCAA are interested in using the best tools available. Change does not come easy for large organizations, so it’s worth celebrating the fact that we’re even having a discussion about dropping the RPI for something better. But while I’m happy to help with the process of replacing the RPI, I’m most invested in changing the way we think about whatever statistical system we end up using.</p>
<p>Consider the case of Illinois State, the highest-rated team in the RPI that missed the 68-team tournament. It wasn’t a surprise that the No. 33 Redbirds were excluded from the field. <a href="http://bracketmatrix.com/">According to bracketmatrix.com</a>, just nine out of the 100 prognosticators that posted a projected bracket on Sunday had ISU in the field.</p>
<p>Why did Illinois State miss out? We have a system designed to rank teams based on their records and the quality of their schedules, but when it comes to a small-conference school like ISU, the human evaluators don’t trust the computer ranking. Instead, they rely on metrics like “quality wins” and “bad losses,” where “quality” and “bad” have arbitrary definitions.</p>
<p>Let’s compare Illinois State to Marquette, whose RPI ranking was nearly 30 spots worse but received an at-large bid. It’s true that Illinois State has more “bad losses” than Marquette—if we’re defining bad losses as those happening against teams ranked outside the top 100 of the RPI, then Illinois State had two compared to Marquette’s zero—but that fact is deceiving. Marquette played 12 games outside the RPI top 100 while Illinois State played 26. It should be obvious that the team that plays more bad teams is more likely to incur losses to bad teams.</p>
<p><a></a>But it’s even less fair than that for the Redbirds. Power-conference teams are also less likely to lose to bad teams, because the power-conference teams usually play those games at home. Most of their poor opponents are found in the nonconference schedule, where they have the economic leverage to schedule programs from lesser conferences. Indeed, of the 12 games that Marquette played against teams outside the top 100, just three—Big East rivals DePaul, Georgetown, and St. John’s—were on the road.<a>*</a> To make things even easier for Marquette, four of its “bad” opponents were really, really bad, falling in the bottom 100 of Division I basketball’s 351 teams. Those games are virtually automatic wins for any team with even remote tournament dreams.</p>
<p>Teams from a competitive mid-major conference like the Missouri Valley play a much different kind of schedule. Most games against teams outside the top 100 are conference games, which are just as likely to be on the road as they are at home. Also, very few of those “bad” opponents are going to be as bad as Howard or Western Carolina, whom Marquette played. Although it played many more teams outside the top 100, Illinois State still had fewer games (three) against teams in the bottom 100 than Marquette. As a consequence, a whole lot more of Illinois State’s games against poorer teams were potentially loseable, if the Redbirds had a particularly bad night or their opponent was feeling it. And the Redbirds did lose two of them—road games to Murray State and Tulsa.</p>
<p>Those bad losses were part of the justification for keeping Illinois State out of the field. Those bad losses also explain why it’s virtually impossible for a team from outside of the top 10 conferences to get an at-large bid.</p>
<p>If Marquette and Illinois State swapped schedules, the Golden Eagles would almost surely lose some games to teams outside the top 100. If you put Illinois State in the Big East, it would have earned some quality wins. No doubt, though, the Redbirds would do much worse than their 17-1 Missouri Valley Conference record when facing the tougher competition. But consider that Xavier went 8-10 against Big East teams not named DePaul and easily earned an at-large bid. The standard for small-conference teams is incredibly high, while the standard for major-conference teams is not as high as you think.</p>
<p>Regardless of what system is used, humans need to be smarter about how to think about that system. It’s a mistake to ignore game location, and it’s a mistake to use arbitrary thresholds to bundle together quality wins and bad losses. Under the current process, when comparing teams of similar quality, you can throw out all the analysis of wins and losses and simply use the size of a school’s basketball budget as the tiebreaker. It works just as well.</p>
<p>Truth be told, Illinois State does not deserve to be 30 spots higher than Marquette in any ranking system. But almost any algorithm that ignores margin of victory has the two teams in the same neighborhood. In other words, each team’s accomplishments are approximately the same if you look at their records and whom they played. It’s only when you start using arbitrary standards like wins in the top 50 or losses outside the top 100 that the picture gets skewed.</p>
<p><a></a>Complete fairness is going to be difficult to achieve, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. There’s a line of thinking that since the tournament field is large, a team that doesn’t make it has nobody to blame but itself. That’s a cop-out. Illinois State performed as an NCAA tournament at-large team should against the schedule it played and got sent to the NIT. We can do better.</p>
<p><em><strong>*Correction, March 14, 2017:&nbsp;</strong>This piece originally misstated that Marquette played eight games against teams outside the top 100 in RPI, with just one of those games on the road. Marquette played 12 such games, with three of them on the road. (<a>Return.</a>)</em></p>Mon, 13 Mar 2017 19:17:26 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/how_the_ncaa_abuses_statistics_to_stack_the_deck_against_small_schools_like.htmlKen Pomeroy2017-03-13T19:17:26ZHow the NCAA abuses statistics to stack the deck against small schools.SportsHow the NCAA Abuses Statistics to Stack the Deck Against Small Schools100170313013ncaacollege basketballncaa basketballKen PomeroySports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/how_the_ncaa_abuses_statistics_to_stack_the_deck_against_small_schools_like.htmlfalsefalsefalseHow the NCAA abuses statistics to stack the deck against small schools:Illinois State should be in the tournament.Dilip Vishwanat/Getty ImagesWichita State’s Zach Brown and Illinois State’s Paris Lee chase a loose ball during the Missouri Valley Conference tournament championship on March 5 in St. Louis, Missouri.How to Win Your NCAA Poolhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/pick_gonzaga_and_bet_against_villanova_in_your_ncaa_pool.html
<p><em>A version of this article </em><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2213974/"><em>originally ran in 2009</em></a><em>. In 2010, our </em><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2247986/"><em>advice to bet on Duke</em></a><em> paid off when the Blue Devils won the title. Our suggestions to&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2011/03/how_to_win_your_ncaa_pool.single.html"><em>pick Texas in 2011</em></a><em> and&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/03/ncaa_basketball_tournament_bracket_act_like_a_hedge_fund_manager_and_pick_ohio_state_to_win_it_all_.single.html"><em>Ohio State in 2012</em></a><em> did not go quite as well. (The Buckeyes, at least, made the Final Four.) Our picks from 2013 to 2016—</em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2013/03/ncaa_tournament_2013_bracket_picks_act_like_a_hedge_fund_manager_and_pick.html"><em>the Florida Gators</em></a><em>, </em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/03/ncaa_bracket_picks_2014_win_your_ncaa_pool_by_acting_like_a_hedge_fund_manager.html"><em>the Arizona Wildcats</em></a><em>, </em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/03/ncaa_bracket_picks_2015_why_you_should_bet_against_kentucky_and_pick_arizona.html"><em>the Arizona Wildcats again</em></a><em>, and </em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/03/ncaa_bracket_picks_2016_why_you_should_bet_against_kansas_and_pick_virginia.html"><em>the Virginia Cavaliers</em></a><em>—all made the Elite Eight. Our second choice in 2016, Villanova, won the national championship. Choose wisely!</em></p>
<p>For anyone who, like me, merely hopes to survive March Madness with minimal embarrassment, the introduction of wisdom-of-the-crowd statistics to online bracket contests has been pure salvation. Even though I didn’t follow college basketball this winter, I can fake a little competence by basing my picks on what a majority of all entrants think will happen. By copying the “<a href="http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/nationalBracket">national bracket</a>,” as ESPN calls it, I’ll lose my $5 with dignity. That’s the magic of crowdsourced bracketology: So long as your office pool is big enough to resemble a cross section of America, you’re unlikely to finish in last place.</p>
<p>Of course, you’re also very unlikely to win if you copy everybody else’s picks. Even if you get the last few games right for the big points, a lot of other people will, too. At least one of them will probably be luckier than you. Still, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385503865?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=slatmaga-20&amp;link_code=as3&amp;camp=211189&amp;creative=373489&amp;creativeASIN=0385503865">collective wisdom can be eerily powerful</a> in the right circumstances. The national bracket typically performs well, as&nbsp;<a href="http://www.danshanoff.com/2008/03/state-of-national-bracket-outperforming.html">various commentators</a> have noted, though it will probably win the money in only a very small pool populated by inexpert players. So is there a way to use these collective picks to your advantage while still having a prayer of taking home the pot?</p>
<p>As it turns out, the wisdom-of-crowds information is extremely useful. The statisticians and expert bracketologists I talked to all urged one central point: Don’t think about guessing the most games correctly. Instead, think about finding “bargains” in the bracket where collective wisdom runs askance of more objective measurements. Exploiting games where your fellow bracketologists are likely to guess wrong, even if the odds of that happening are still against you, will give you the best shot at jetting ahead of the pack. An NCAA bracket, then, is more like a long-shot stock than a game: The odds of winning may be low but the big pot makes the gamble worth it—if you know how to maximize your investment.</p>
<p>The “contrarian” strategy I’m suggesting here isn’t new; correctly choosing upsets has always given pool jockeys a major boost. What’s changed in the past few years is our ability to value the risk and rewards of a given bet and to decide whether it’s worth it. This bracket-picking strategy isn’t so different from the way Wall Street became obsessed with modeling risk, as <em>Wired</em> has&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all">chronicled</a>. The key is having access to two data sets: the wisdom-of-the-crowds data from the national bracket and a table of more objective stats. By comparing the two, you’ll be able to assess whether you’re getting bang for your buck when you throw your lot in with an underdog team.</p>
<p>Before you start filling out your bracket, then, you need to choose some measure of team strength that’s free of biases and groupthink. Here, the bountiful internet does not disappoint. Dabblers can choose from many different statistical measures—<a href="http://www.raymondcheong.com/rankings/index.html">adjusted scoring margin</a>, the <a href="http://www.kenpom.com/">Ken Pomeroy ratings</a>, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/sports/ncaab/sagarin/">Jeff Sagarin’s computer ratings</a>—that rank teams based on factors like strength of schedule and margin of victory. Other services, like <a href="http://www.teamrankings.com/bracket-brains/">Team Rankings</a>, charge a fee for rigorous analysis, factoring in the results of real games between similar pairs of teams, the distance from each team’s home campus, and so forth.</p>
<p>Second, you have to steel yourself for the possibility that your pursuit of first place will leave you in last place. While it may get you ridiculed by your friends, it’s important to remember that (at least monetarily) the consequences of coming in dead last are no more severe than coming in a few spots shy of the gold. Act as if you’re a hedge fund manager in the good old days: Risk is your friend, and the consequences of making a bad bet are small. And unlike with a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, you’re not playing against opponents with equal fidelity to statistics and information. Your office pool is full of people making decisions based on snippets of games they happened to catch and whatever allegiances or vendettas they’re bringing to the table. This is your chance to take advantage.</p>
<p><a></a>Again, your overall strategy should be to look for situations where the national bracket values a team much higher than the objective statistics. (I should stipulate that all of this advice assumes standard NCAA pool rules, where the points for a correct guess double each round, from 1 point in what the NCAA calls the “second round” to 32 for the final game.) For example, as of 2:20 p.m. Eastern on Monday only 6.9 percent of all the participants in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge have picked Gonzaga to win the tournament—the right-most column on <a href="http://games.espn.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/2017/en/whopickedwhom">this table</a>. <a href="http://kenpom.com/blog/2017-ncaa-tournament-forecast/">Pomeroy’s log5 analysis of the tournament</a>, by contrast,&nbsp;gives the Bulldogs a 20.5 percent chance of winning it all, the best odds of any team in the field. This makes Gonzaga a decent bargain—while cold-blooded, numerical analysis gives the Bulldogs a roughly 1-in-5 shot at the title, only 1 in 15 people have picked them to win. As such, Gonzaga is the most undervalued asset in the 2017 NCAA Tournament.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Villanova and Duke—the first and third picks on ESPN.com—are not a bargain at all. In fact, the Wildcats and the Blue Devils are both overvalued by the crowd. While 16.2 percent of ESPN users like Villanova, Pomeroy’s log5 analysis gives them a 10 percent shot; Duke is the pick of 12.2 percent of ESPN’s bracketologists and has just a 3.2 percent chance of winning it all by Pomeroy’s metrics.</p>
<p>Although fans who’ve watched&nbsp;Villanova and Duke this year might believe that both of those teams are better than Gonzaga, the former two are worse bets. Which would you prefer, the team that a bunch of other people in your pool will also pick (Villanova and Duke) or one that very few will favor (Gonzaga)? I would take Gonzaga—at least, if I wanted a chance to win the prize money instead of just placing respectably. (This assumes your pool resembles the country at large, of course; a pool among Gonzaga undergraduates probably would not offer the same generous odds.)</p>
<p>Biostatistician Bradley Carlin, who co-authored a <a href="http://www.stat.duke.edu/~jbn9/papers/nca.pdf">2005 paper</a> on contrarian strategies in NCAA brackets, suggests a “champion-only” technique. While most people spend a lot of time puzzling over potential first-round upsets, the mathematical reality is that it’s difficult to win a pool without securing those boffo championship game points. The payoff for risk-taking also increases in later rounds. Consider the first-round game between No. 5 seed Notre Dame and No. 12 seed Princeton. Just 17.1 percent&nbsp;of ESPN players predict that the Princeton will pull off the big upset while Pomeroy gives the school a 31.3 percent chance&nbsp;of knocking off Notre Dame. On paper, that differential looks like a good bargain. But consider that this upset will reward the lucky Princeton backer with a mere one extra point in a standard office pool. If Notre Dame wins, Princeton supporters are suddenly missing an important player in the bracket.</p>
<p>Whom should you pick as your champion? You want to look for teams with a respectable chance of winning that don’t come in with high expectations. As the size of the pool balloons, so must your audacity. You may skate to victory with traditional choices in a group of 12 people, but in a pool of 100, you’ll have to get fancy and prepare to lose miserably if the cards don’t fall your way. (A miserable loss is a good way to describe our pick of the Texas Longhorns in 2011—and our suggestion to avoid Connecticut. In 2015, we also advised you to avoid Duke. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.)</p>
<p>Other than Gonzaga, there’s one more decent bargain in this year’s field. If you don’t like the Bulldogs, go with Louisville: Though the No. 2 seed Cardinals have been picked to win the title by just 2.5 percent of ESPN.com competitors, Louisville has a 5.1 percent title chance according to Ken Pomeroy. West Virginia is also slightly underrated by the crowd, with ESPN.com users giving the Mountaineers a 0.9 percent shot to win while Pomeroy has them at 4.2 percent. Another long shot that could come in (but probably will not): Wichita State (0.3 percent on ESPN.com; 3.3 percent from Pomeroy). Who are the worst bets in the field? Other than Villanova and Duke, you’ll get crummy value by backing a pair of blue bloods: Kansas (11.9 percent on ESPN.com; 5.2 percent from Pomeroy) and UCLA (8.8 percent on ESPN.com; 1.8 percent from Pomeroy).</p>
<p>Of course, the trouble with picking an off-the-radar champ is that the benefits of such a strategy materialize only in the long term. Another author of that 2005 paper on bracket strategies, Jarad Niemi, told me that he has won back his investment in entry fees three to four times over the years, but a great deal of that came from a good year in 2008. (Considering how good they are at calculating risk, it’s no surprise that guys like Niemi and Carlin excel in pools that award bonus points for upsets. Carlin said he won one such pool three out of five years.) A strategy that wins you a lot of money a small amount of the time may work well in sports with long seasons, but it can be tough to keep the faith when you finish in the cellar for six straight Marches. But look at it this way: Did you ever win with your old strategy?</p>Mon, 13 Mar 2017 18:57:38 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/pick_gonzaga_and_bet_against_villanova_in_your_ncaa_pool.htmlChris Wilson2017-03-13T18:57:38ZAct like a hedge fund manager and pick Gonzaga to win it all.SportsYou Should Pick Gonzaga to Win Your NCAA Pool100170313010college basketballncaaChris WilsonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/03/pick_gonzaga_and_bet_against_villanova_in_your_ncaa_pool.htmlfalsefalsefalseYou should pick Gonzaga to win your NCAA pool:The key is to look for teams with a respectable chance of winning that don’t come in with high expectations.Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesThe Gonzaga Bulldogs celebrate on the court after defeating the Saint Mary’s Gaels 74–56 to win the West Coast Conference Basketball Tournament on Tuesday in Las Vegas.There Is No More American Name Than Muhammad Alihttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/what_the_officials_who_detained_muhammad_ali_jr_should_know.html
<p>“Where did you get your name from?” an immigration official asked Muhammad Ali Jr. earlier this month as the son of the legendary American boxer was reportedly detained for about two hours at a Florida airport.</p>
<p>“Are you a Muslim?” the official asked. And he repeated: “Where did you get your name from?”</p>
<p>According to the <em>Louisville Courier-Journal</em>, <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2017/02/24/muhammad-ali-jr-detained-immigration-fla-airport/98376180/">Ali Jr. said he was a Muslim</a>, at which point “the officers kept questioning him about his religion and where he was born.” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection <a href="http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2017/02/25/customs-confirms-muhammad-ali-jr-airport-questioning/98405880/">confirms that it held Ali Jr.</a> but denies he was subjected to extra questioning due to his faith.)</p>
<p>And what about his name—where did it come from? The answer is that Muhammad Ali Jr. got his name from his famous father. And where did his father get his name? He fought for it. He earned it by making himself a champion of American values. <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/06/what_muhammad_ali_won_in_his_supreme_court_fight_over_the_vietnam_war_and.html">He sacrificed the most important years of his boxing career</a> to stand up for principles of freedom of religion and thought.</p>
<p>Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. in Louisville, Kentucky. He was the great-grandson of slaves. In 1964, Clay announced he had joined the Nation of Islam, a religious organization that encouraged its members to cast aside their slave names, the names that had been affixed to them by their owners like cattle brands, the names that had been changed through the years on whims or on auction blocks.</p>
<p>When Cassius Clay first embraced the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, he was less interested in orthodox Islam than in the wisdom of the leader himself, who had changed his own name from Elijah Poole and who taught his followers that black people in America would never be treated as equals until they established their independent identities.</p>
<p>At first, Cassius Clay changed his name to Cassius X, like his friend Malcolm X, who had been born Malcolm Little. But Elijah Muhammad thought it important to honor the young boxer, who had recently defeated Sonny Liston to win the heavyweight championship, with a name befitting his stature. “Muhammad,” Elijah Muhammad explained, meant worthy of praise. “Ali” meant lofty. It was not by accident that Elijah Muhammad took two of the most common names in the Muslim world for his disciple. He knew the name would sound strange to American ears but that it would ring out loud and clear in the Muslim world: The heavyweight champion of the world and one of the most famous black men in America was a Muslim.</p>
<p>Muhammad Ali paid a price for choosing a seemingly strange religion and foreign-sounding name. Many newspapers and many of his opponents <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/06/muhammad_ali_changed_his_name_in_1964_newspapers_called_him_cassius_clay.html">refused to call him Muhammad Ali</a>. They mocked him. And when Ali said his religious beliefs prevented him from fighting in the Vietnam War, he was convicted of draft dodging. After fighting all the way to the Supreme Court, his conviction was overturned, but only after Ali spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, suffered vilification in the press, and lost some of the prime years of his career.</p>
<p>Eventually, Ali’s courage and strength of conviction made him a hero far beyond the world of sports. It also helped make him a powerful force worldwide in promoting understanding between nations, cultures, and religions. He had a kind of legitimacy and independence unlike any other American of his time. He showed that America was big and strong enough to embrace its rebels and to tolerate differences in religion and culture. That’s why Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan sent Ali on diplomatic missions to Africa and the Middle East.</p>
<p>In 1987, on a charitable mission to Peshawar in Pakistan, the boxer told an audience:</p>
<blockquote>
Many people in America know nothing about Muslims. Many people in America know nothing about Prophet Muhammad. America is a big country. America is a beautiful country. All peoples, all races, religions are in America, but the power structure and the news media present a bad picture of Muslims. Whenever Muslims are mentioned, people think about Palestinian guerrilla. Whenever Muslims are mentioned, they think about Khomeini, they think about Col. Gadhafi, and whatever he may do that they consider rebellious.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
My fight in the boxing ring was only to make me popular. I never enjoyed boxing. I never enjoyed hurting people, knocking people down. But this world only recognizes power, wealth, and fame. … And after hearing the powerful message of Islam, and seeing the beautiful unity in Muslims, after seeing how the children are raised, after seeing the procedures of prayer, after seeing the way we eat, the way we dress, just the whole attitude of Islam, it was so beautiful. I said, this is something more people have to know about, this is something more people would accept and join if they really understood. Whether they be black or white, red, yellow, or brown, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, or atheist, if he hears Islam, reads the Holy Quran, hears the plain truth about Prophet Muhammad, he’ll have to be affected in one way or the other.
</blockquote>
<p>What American could have a problem with those words? Perhaps one who also had difficulty accepting that a man named Barack Hussein Obama could be a true American.</p>
<p>Muhammad Ali Jr. was born in America—Philadelphia, to be precise. His ancestors were brought here on slave ships and treated as property for generations. In 1964, his father traded his slave name for one of his own choosing, one that represented his religious beliefs, one that resonated with American values of freedom, one that would carry around the world as evidence of America’s greatest strengths.</p>
<p>If the name Muhammad Ali isn’t American enough for our government, then maybe it’s our government that isn’t American enough.</p>Tue, 28 Feb 2017 00:30:14 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/what_the_officials_who_detained_muhammad_ali_jr_should_know.htmlJonathan Eig2017-02-28T00:30:14ZWhat the immigration officials who detained the boxer’s son should know about the great champion and this nation’s values.SportsWhat the Officials Who Detained Muhammad Ali Jr. Should Know About American Values100170227021sportsmuhammad aliJonathan EigSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/what_the_officials_who_detained_muhammad_ali_jr_should_know.htmlfalsefalsefalseWhat the officials who detained Muhammad Ali Jr. should know about American values:There is no more American name than Muhammad Ali.Paul Cannon/AP ImagesMuhammad Ali, upon his arrival at the home of sect leader Elijah Muhammad, on Feb. 24, 1965, in Chicago.“That Was My Play!”http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_salt_lake_screaming_eagles_a_football_team_controlled_by_fans_with_smartphones.html
<p>In a drafty arena on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, near the end of a full-pads training camp practice for an expansion, eight-on-eight indoor football team, I think I may have witnessed the future of sports.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a 470-pound tight end with a 9-foot vertical and a 3.2 40, or a genius new spread formation that aligns the center behind the tailback. It was just a few dudes with an app and a dream who, if all goes to plan, could fuse the gap between live sports, massive multiplayer videogames, and fantasy geek analytics. They are the minds behind the <a href="https://www.saltlakescreamingeagles.com/">Salt Lake Screaming Eagles</a>—the newest franchise in the 10-team Indoor Football League, where tickets start at $5 and players make $250 a game—and they’re embarking on the first steps of a seasonlong experiment in what is being termed “interactive football.”</p>
<p>A couple weeks ago, a few rows up in the near-deserted stands of the Maverik Center—a minor-league hockey rink where the Screaming Eagles will play their home games—I watched a dozen or so nonathletic folks in jeans and parkas thumb their iPhones and Android devices. They’d been waiting for a scrimmage at the close of practice to run a live beta test, and now showtime had arrived. “OK, pick your play!” shouted a man in a hoodie sitting in the hockey penalty box, glancing at a laptop screen. Using the play-calling function on the <a href="http://www.saltlakescreamingeagles.com/news/31">Screaming Eagles mobile app</a>, this test group—comprising team owners, employees, and a few pals—scrolled through diagrammed play selections, not unlike the kind you’d see while playing a <em>Madden</em> NFL video game. Each voted for his or her favorite run or pass.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, down on the sideline, the Screaming Eagles’ burly, bearded head coach stared at a separate laptop, impatiently awaiting the results. Once the leading vote-getter locked in (in this maiden effort, the winning play was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curl_(route)">a simple curl route</a>), the coach barked the call to his quarterback as the 25-second play clock ticked. The QB broke the huddle, sprinted to the line of scrimmage, and—having been issued marching orders by the people in the seats—completed a curl to a receiver who was tackled for a short gain.</p>
<p>Not much to look at, footballwise. The players still seemed wary. But shouts and cheers exploded from the stands, with phones raised triumphantly in the air. Then noses immediately returned to screens. No time to gloat—the coach and QB were antsy, peering upward, waiting for the fans’ next call as the play clock ticked down again.</p>
<p>It didn’t take long before the Screaming Eagles offense had driven the length of the field—in the IFL, it’s just 50 yards from end zone to end zone—and punched the ball in for a touchdown. “I voted for that play!” laughed a hefty guy in a baseball hat. “That was my play!”</p>
<p>“You called that? Great call!” shouted one of the Screaming Eagles players, pointing up into the seats.</p>
<p>Sohrob Farudi, the team’s majority owner, looked on with a wide, almost disbelieving grin. “This is <em>exactly</em> what we wanted,” he marveled. “The players thanking the fans for calling their number! This is just how we dreamt it.”</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Farudi is a 39-year-old Los Angeles entrepreneur who, back in 2011, sold a company called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipswap">Flipswap</a> that he’d built around a real-time pricing engine for used mobile phones. Although he didn’t clear enough to fulfill his childhood dream of buying the Cowboys, in 2014 he did become a minority owner of the Arena Football League’s Las Vegas Outlaws. “That was the worst experience of my life,” he says now. His six-figure investment resulted in <a href="http://loudwire.com/motley-crue-vince-neil-accused-defrauding-investors-arena-football-team/">a still-ongoing lawsuit</a> and a <a href="https://lasvegassun.com/vegasdeluxe/2015/aug/10/vince-neil-clears-air-las-vegas-outlaws-ouster-pla/">bitter public feud with co-investor Vince Neil</a>—better known as the bleach-tressed lead vocalist of hair-metal rockers M&ouml;tley Cr&uuml;e. The Outlaws went kaput after a single season.</p>
<p>Farudi vowed to try football ownership again, but this time he had a far bolder idea in mind. He longed to wed sports with mobile technology to somehow create a team that was completely interactive—run entirely by its fans. He found a few other folks entranced by the idea, formed an ownership group, and went hunting for a team to mess with. They settled on the IFL, which had been formed in 2008, because it let them start with a blank slate by buying the right to launch an expansion franchise. And so, in October 2015, Farudi’s group plunked down the $75,000 fee. And the wackadoo experimentation began.</p>
<p>When Farudi said he wanted the franchise to be run entirely by its fans, he meant that he wanted the franchise to be run entirely by its fans. He started by putting the new team’s <em>geographic location</em> up for a vote. Both Oklahoma City and Salt Lake were viable options, he’d determined, so he put up a poll on the team’s website. Once Salt Lake won, he asked the public to bestow a nickname on the team. About 36,000 votes came in, with <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sports/3974378-155/new-salt-lake-indoor-football-team">“Screaming Eagles” beating out options</a> like “Teamy McTeamface” and “Spaghetti Monsters.” Farudi says he was actually disappointed in the conservatism of the online hordes. He was rooting for a more offbeat choice to win because it would garner easy publicity, plus offer early proof that he’d respect the fans’ wishes no matter how unconventional.</p>
<p>Farudi’s a bit unconventional himself. His main business ventures currently include a wholesale marijuana edibles startup and an outfit that sells specialty cooking charcoal to restaurants. He’s young and clever, bored by the thought of running a regular old team, and absolutely tickled by the notion of introducing something wholly new to the world of sports. Guided by his thirst for novelty, he kept pushing forward, searching for more things that fans could vote on.</p>
<p>Screaming Eagles partisans chose the head coach, based on a selection of r&eacute;sum&eacute;s and some interviews the team uploaded to YouTube. Fans chose a portion of the players on the roster, based on college stats and footage from training camp practices. For a small fee, Farudi let folks dial into a weekly conference call, giving input directly to the team’s president as “virtual general managers.”</p>
<p>But his driving vision has always been to let the fans call plays. Farudi didn’t want this to be a one-time gimmick, like voting on whether to receive or defer on the coin flip or letting a local celebrity call pass or run on the first snap after kickoff. He was determined to allow regular fans to choose every offensive play, in every possession, all game long. He’d also try to give them final say on any other in-game decision that could feasibly be put to a vote. Boot the next kickoff deep or attempt to onside it? Kick the extra point or go for two? Everything was fair game.</p>
<p>Farudi was convinced he could make it work, technologywise. Certainly the fans in the arena could watch the game live and make quick play selections on their phones, choosing between a few tailored options. In the training camp session I watched, spectators got 15 seconds to lock in their picks, which left 10 seconds on the play clock for the offense to get to the line and hike. Sure enough, after initial hiccups, the team fell into a rhythm and had little problem executing the beamed-in calls.</p>
<p>Streaming delays would prevent people watching a game online from voting in direct reaction to video footage. The fix for that was a quickie text readout within the mobile app—updating the current down-and-distance and time remaining—which would let fans vote without having to wait for the action to catch up on their live streams.</p>
<p>Until after the ball was snapped, only the Screaming Eagles coaches would be allowed to see the vote results. Otherwise an opponent’s defensive coordinator could simply look at his phone and know what play was coming. It’s true he could see which options were on the table for fans to vote on, but these would include enough variation to keep him guessing.</p>
<p>Perhaps the greater danger would be opposing fans hacking the process. What if they ganged up to click the Eagles into suboptimal play calls? What if they swamped the vote with demands to onside kick every time or go for a two-point conversion when a simple extra point would win the game? Farudi acknowledged there’d be no easy way to stop them. You can give the reins to the fans, but you can’t pick which fans take them.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The Eagles’ head coach, William McCarthy, won the gig with a 0.6 percentage point margin in the fan voting, mostly on the strength of a camera-ready, WWE-style personality that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=newkumytZj0">he unleashed in YouTube appearances</a>. He’s a huge, bald, bearded guy, radiating toughness. Yet to watch McCarthy on the sideline is to observe a man who vacillates, moment to moment, between dictator and serf.</p>
<p>McCarthy’s coached for other IFL teams and various college squads, and when the team is on defense, he’s in his element. (Defensive play calls are not subject to the whims of Screaming Eagles rooters; there’s no time for fans to call defensive plays in reaction to the other team’s formation.) When his quarterback goes under center, though, he is suddenly, and very awkwardly, rendered powerless. He simply stares at a screen to see which play has been chosen, relays this info through his radio mic to the quarterback’s in-helmet earphone, and then prays that the wisdom of crowds applies to the gridiron.</p>
<p>The coach can tweak around the edges. For instance, were fans to call the same play three consecutive times, he might disguise it by varying the pre-snap motion of the receivers. In the final minute of the half or the game, he’s also permitted to seize control with a hurry-up offense that needn’t wait for fan input. And, before the game begins, McCarthy helps choose the fans’ menu of possible plays, in concert with the app designers and the team’s analytics chief (a former private equity analyst brought in by Farudi). Various down-and-distance situations each get buckets of plays, any of which McCarthy would theoretically be comfortable calling in that context. If he wants to make halftime adjustments after noting the other side’s weaknesses, he can ask the techies to ramp up how often fans will be offered the option of, say, a bubble screen</p>
<p>Still, compared with the tyrannical status enjoyed by most football head coaches, there’s a lot of passivity baked in to McCarthy’s role. And here one is tempted to muse on the risks of direct democracy and the perilous downsides of castrating expertise while empowering the unwashed masses. Because the single biggest impediment to a fan-run offense will almost certainly be the fans.</p>
<p>It’s a good bet that a fan collective will opt for a radically higher pass-run ratio than a professional football coach would. They’ll surely be more game to roll the dice on onside kicks and to go for two when the extra point would suffice. Sabotage by opposing fan bases could be entirely unnecessary—the Screaming Eagles fans might well sabotage themselves.</p>
<p>This could lead, in the end, to some interesting experiments in game theory, crowd psychology, and behavioral motivation. Suppose the team learns, through analysis of data from the first couple games, that fans are most likely to choose the play placed in the top right corner of the selection array? Would it start dropping the coach’s preferred choice in that precious on-screen real estate? If fans start voting for onside kicks all the time, the team could raise the threshold for a vote—requiring, say, 90 percent approval to attempt one. Should fans accept this? Would they rebel against these nudges? If they don’t, is the whole crux of the exercise diminished, ripping the power back out of the fans’ grip?</p>
<p>And what if you’re an opposing coach game planning for the Screaming Eagles? Will it be easy to analyze their tendencies, keeping spreadsheets of how fans have voted in given situations? Would you encourage your own fans to cross over and flood the ballot box?</p>
<p>This isn’t quite traditional sports, where coaches and athletes have autonomy. This isn’t e-sports, where gamers’ thumb dexterity determines their success inside a virtual world. This is, in essence, a melding of mind sports with live sports. From the app-wielding fan’s point of view, a Screaming Eagles football game is akin to a crowdsourced hand of poker or a committee playing one side of a chess match. The truth is, we’ve never really seen anything like this before, so we simply don’t know how it will turn out.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The Screaming Eagles’ ambitions shouldn’t obscure the reality that this is an arena-league football team, subject to the typical indignities that come with such an endeavor. The mascot wears an eagle costume copped secondhand for $2,500. The 66 yards of FieldTurf—$120,000 when bought by the now-defunct Richmond Raiders two years ago, then scooped up for $30,000 by Farudi when he needed to carpet the Maverik Center—is weirdly wrinkled in spots, bubbling up in an alarming manner. And then there’s the biggest buzzkill: For all your internet innovations, the fate of your franchise still depends on football players bashing into each other in meatspace.</p>
<p>This turned out to be the Screaming Eagles’ downfall on Thursday night, when they took the field for their first-ever game. Players danced onto the field to DMX’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThlhSnRk21E">Ruff Ryders’ Anthem</a>”—chosen by the fans, natch. The players had their Twitter handles sewn on the backs of their jerseys, instead of their names, because INTERACTIVE. There was a hype man who whipped the crowd into a frenzy. But once the whistle blew, things went south.</p>
<p>The Eagles’ initial offensive series ended with a fumble in their own end zone, recovered by the Nebraska Danger for a touchdown. I was watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdLEQvAw-1g">the YouTube stream of the game</a>, and the chat box got real snarky, real fast.</p>
<p>“That wasn’t the play I called,” typed one wag.</p>
<p>“I don’t remember ‘drop the ball in the end zone’ as a play option in the app,” replied another.</p>
<p>Facing fourth-and-15 from the Eagles’ own 1-yard line on the team’s next possession, fans voted to attempt a 57-yard field goal. Due to its low trajectory it was easily blocked and returned for a second Danger touchdown.</p>
<p>There were fun moments. When the Eagles scored their inaugural touchdown, spectators were invited to storm the field and participate in the post-TD celebration. Why not? They called the play. (The resulting penalty didn’t help the overall cause.)</p>
<p>The game ended with a score of Danger 78, Screaming Eagles + Screaming Eagles Fans 47 Like the game itself, the app experience was less than perfect. It was hard to feel directly engaged—particularly voting from a couple thousand miles away—when each play looked equally chaotic and equally likely to end in a failed quarterback scramble. That was less the fault of the fans than of the Eagles’ offensive line. Even so, voting for each play became a bit tiresome after a couple quarters. Seeing in-app updates that read, rather abruptly, “Your play won—interception,” did not ramp up my enthusiasm.</p>
<p>But this was one game in a long season. And it was the tentative debut for a wide-ranging new theory about how to manage a franchise. The app will improve. The Eagles’ pass protection might, too.</p>
<p>If all of Farudi’s ambitious plans come to fruition, it’s easy to imagine an array of new opportunities. Instead of the tiny, regional fan bases endemic to most second-tier athletic leagues, an interactive team might lure in sports geeks from across the country, or even around the globe. What stats-obsessed, all-22-film-watching pigskin head wouldn’t be intrigued to play offensive coordinator, analyze practice tapes, and pick which players will start and which will sit? In chat rooms, he might sway other fans to help test his theory about surprise onside kicks in the first quarter, by convincing them to vote en masse for a sneak attack right after the second offensive series.</p>
<p>And oh, the monetization possibilities. A fan could conceivably make in-app purchases that would inflate the value of his votes. Or he might shell out a hefty sum to call one play all by his lonesome. (For now, fans can earn Screaming Eagles “Fan IQ” points by answering trivia questions and reading news items about the team. Those with the most points will eventually be given various perks, and maybe have greater stature in the play-call voting.)</p>
<p>Farudi and his partners—their Santa Monica, California–based company is called Project Fanchise—have already bought another IFL team, the Colorado Crush, and are planning to make it into a second fan-run team before the season’s end. Farudi thinks he can convince every IFL team to go fan-run next year, transforming the acronym to mean Interactive Football League. He envisions it as a sports-tech playground, with sensors in the balls and cameras on the helmets.</p>
<p>Whatever happens with the Screaming Eagles, or the fan-dominated IFL Farudi pines for, I do think the future of sports lies in here somewhere. The early mistakes will be corrected. Someone will surely figure this out.</p>
<p>My bet is that this sort of interactivity will soon come to minor league baseball. The sport has lots of long breaks in the action that would make voting easy. It’s also rife with crucial yet relatively noncomplex decisions like whether to pull a pitcher or to pinch-hit for a batter. Wouldn’t you want to vote on something like that?</p>
<p>For now, we’ll just have to gawk at the Screaming Eagles and their noble mission. A team of the fans, by the fans, for the fans. There’s hope for democracy, yet.</p>Fri, 17 Feb 2017 22:23:03 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_salt_lake_screaming_eagles_a_football_team_controlled_by_fans_with_smartphones.htmlSeth Stevenson2017-02-17T22:23:03ZThe future of sports just might be the Screaming Eagles, a football team controlled by fans with smartphones.SportsIs the Future of Sports a Football Team Controlled by Fans with Smartphones?100170217017footballsportsSeth StevensonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_salt_lake_screaming_eagles_a_football_team_controlled_by_fans_with_smartphones.htmlfalsefalsefalseIs the future of sports a football team controlled by fans with smartphones?An in-depth look at the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles.Melissa MajchrzakA Screaming Eagles player is tackled by a member of the Nebraska Danger in the first game of the season Thursday at the Maverik Center in Salt Lake City.They’ll Tumble for Yahttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_joys_of_women_s_college_gymnastics_the_best_show_on_tv.html
<p>Last year, before Simone Biles blew everyone away at the Olympics by winning four gold medals and being generally awesome, UCLA’s Sophina DeJesus showed the world that women’s gymnastics isn’t all about nationalism, gold medals, and overwrought NBC coverage. It can also be a whole lot of fun, for spectators and for the gymnasts.</p>
<p>DeJesus dabbed and nae-naed her way to viral fame, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/sports/olympics/ucla-gymnastics-whip-nae-nae-sophina-dejesus.html?_r=0">a profile in the <em>New York Times</em></a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByAssED2j3w">an appearance on <em>The Ellen DeGeneres Show</em></a>. But her routine is not the exception in NCAA gymnastics. It’s the norm. And you can watch performances that are just as thrilling on any given Friday or Saturday or Sunday from January to April.</p>
<p>Over the past few years, women’s college gymnastics has taken off all over the country. <a href="http://espnmediazone.com/us/press-releases/2016/10/2017-sec-gymnastics-schedule-features-live-meets-ever-slated-television/">The SEC</a> and <a href="http://pac-12.com/womens-gymnastics/schedule">Pac-12</a> television networks devote hours of programming time to women’s college gym each weekend. <a href="https://twitter.com/UtahMarz/status/709389667787874304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Attendance at meets is climbing</a>, with schools like Utah, Alabama, Georgia, and LSU at or near capacity for every home competition. And Olympic medalists are getting in on the action. Madison Kocian, who won the team gold and individual uneven bars silver in Rio, and Kyla Ross, who was a member of the 2012 gold medal–winning team from London, both just started their careers as UCLA Bruins. Ruby Harrold, a member of Great Britain’s Olympic team from Rio, just matriculated at LSU. Maggie Nichols, the 2015 world championships bronze medalist on floor exercise, is dominating at top-ranked Oklahoma.</p>
<p>College gymnastics, compared with the elite international version, is the same sport but a different game. There are still four apparatuses—the vault, the uneven bars, the balance beam, and the floor exercise. The routines are still evaluated subjectively, so you can feel outraged or confused about any score that doesn’t seem quite right. But the goals are different. College gymnastics still uses <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1501101366/?tag=slatmaga-20">the “Perfect 10” system that’s now obsolete at the elite level</a>, and the gymnasts compete according to modified Level 10 rules, which are less demanding than the ones used by Olympic gymnasts. This means you’ll see slightly easier vaults, fewer release moves and complicated pirouettes on bars, and <em>just</em> three tumbling passes on floor. In college, the focus is on execution rather than pushing the body to its limits. It’s less about doing every crazy skill in the Code of Points than doing a few things perfectly. And since you can still get a perfect score, that attention to detail can be rewarded. Just five weeks into the college season, there have already been seven Perfect 10s.</p>
<p>College gymnastics is a true team sport. At the elite level, athletes are thrown together right before major competitions and dubbed a “team.” In college, they train together, day after day, year after year. They compete together every weekend for three months out of the year. (In an average, non-Olympic year an elite gymnast might compete just three or four times.) Their lineups shift throughout the season, just as in other team sports. Freshmen get their shots to gain experience while second-stringers come off the bench to fill a void left by an injured athlete. And most of the competitions are dual meets, a setup that mirrors other sports where opponents face off against one another. At the end, there’s one winner.</p>
<p>For college gymnasts, the team result is everything; the rest is just commentary. They don’t even bother holding a separate competition to crown the NCAA all-around champion—the gymnast with the best four-event tally during preliminaries, when all of the athletes are focused on helping their team make the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCAA_Women%27s_Gymnastics_Championships">Super Six Team Finals</a>, is declared the winner.</p>
<p>It’s clear from watching the meets that the gymnasts have embraced this team-first mentality. After years of competing at the elite or club levels, where the focus was on individual success and outcomes, they get to subsume their goals to those of a very supportive, boisterous collective. When an NCAA gymnast is on the balance beam, she’s competing for her teammates, who are screaming for her from the sidelines. When she lands her dismount, she is mobbed with hugs and high-fives. After every <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygEv8DUZWpE">vault landing</a>, stuck or otherwise, the entire team treks down the runway to congratulate the gymnast. And on floor, as the gymnast dances and tumbles her way through 90 seconds, her team is there on the sidelines, performing her choreography in solidarity.</p>
<p>As DeJesus’ floor routine demonstrated, NCAA gymnasts are as committed to entertaining the crowd as they are to winning. “It’s competitive and aggressive and athletic but also a show,” Spencer Barnes, who snarkily and lovingly covers women’s college gymnastics at <a href="https://balancebeamsituation.com/">the Balance Beam Situation</a>, told me. “It is committed to show at every moment.”</p>
<p>DeJesus’ routine caught on (and Lloimincia Hall’s back in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsrJ1jJuhjI">2014</a>), in part, because it played against the expectations of those who’d only seen women’s gymnastics during the Olympics. DeJesus performed to crowd-pleasing music, used popular club dance moves, and looked like she was having a blast.</p>
<p>While DeJesus is notable for her dance ability—as a kid, she’d been on the TV show <em>Hip Hop Harry</em>—every floor routine in college gymnastics is constructed to please the crowd. This year, one gymnast <a href="http://www.byutv.org/watch/137b161b-19c8-4b10-9d81-4c46666e752f/gymnastics-w-utah-state-vs-byu-12017">tumbles to Fox’s NFL theme music</a>. Another plays the part of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRLW1nLhXDE">caged lion</a>. Oklahoma’s <a href="https://gymcastic.com/239-maggie-nichols-kj-kindler/">Nichols</a>, performing to a song called “Don’t Let Me Down,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUkwTWBoBzc">plays an orphan worried about being reunited with her birth mom</a>. While not every routine is as successful as DeJesus’, there’s something to be said for going for maximum show-womanship.</p>
<p>Perhaps all these gymnasts are having so much fun because, for most of them at least, the college game is their four-year farewell tour. There is no professional league for gymnastics. Although there are many former elites in the NCAA, most competitors did not compete at the sport’s top level before college. Even for those who did make it to the pinnacle, it can be very hard to get back into elite gymnastics after college—their bodies are more beat up after an additional four years of training and competitions. For all but a small group—among them UCLA’s Mohini Bhardwaj and Anna Li, University of Denver’s Jessica L&oacute;pez, and Georgia’s Brittany Rogers—college is the end of the road. But you could do a lot worse than finishing out your competitive career on live TV in front of packed houses.</p>
<p>In addition to turning out gymnastics fans and young gymnasts, the college version of the sport taps into pre-existing fandoms. When I attended a meet between UCLA and Utah in Salt Lake City in early 2015, I sat next to season ticket holders who’d started attending competitions in the mid-1990s because they had been Utah basketball and football fans. There is no other context outside of the Olympics where gymnastics draws in viewers who are not explicitly fans of the sport.</p>
<p>And college gymnastics is just as good on television as it is in the arena. Sports, like award shows, are meant to be enjoyed live. You wouldn’t want to watch a basketball game if you already knew the final score; ditto for gymnastics. While NBC insists on showing Olympic gymnastics on a tape delay, the SEC and Pac-12 networks treat college gym like a real sporting event. A lot of the fun of watching a college meet comes from not knowing how it’s going to turn out. Unlike in elite competitions, where the U.S. women <a href="https://www.bustle.com/articles/177839-did-team-usa-win-by-the-largest-margin-in-gymnastics-history-the-final-five-set-a">win titles by 8 points</a>, the margins in college gymnastics are razor-thin, typically coming down to just a few tenths—just a handful of unstuck vault landings or beam wobbles.</p>
<p>The Olympic version of gymnastics is kind of like the films released during the winter holidays to be considered for the Oscars. They’re “serious” and “important,” and they win all of the big prizes. College gymnastics is like your favorite television show—there every week with characters (and routines) you’ve come to know and love over the course of a season. Olympic gymnastics is more difficult and daring. College gymnastics is more fun. If you’re a fan of the sport, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re not watching both.</p>Fri, 10 Feb 2017 19:45:07 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_joys_of_women_s_college_gymnastics_the_best_show_on_tv.htmlDvora Meyers2017-02-10T19:45:07ZThe joys of women’s college gymnastics, the best show on TV.SportsWomen’s College Gymnastics Is the Best Show on TV100170210014sportsgymnasticscollege sportsDvora MeyersSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_joys_of_women_s_college_gymnastics_the_best_show_on_tv.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe joys of women’s college gymnastics, the best show on TV:Olympic gymnastics is more difficult and daring. College gymnastics is more fun.Stephen Lew/Icon Sportswire/Corbis via Getty ImagesThe LSU Tigers get pumped up for their meet against the Oklahoma Sooners at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Jan. 9, 2016.We Are the 99 Percenthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/did_the_falcons_really_have_a_99_percent_chance_to_win_the_super_bowl.html
<p>How big was the <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_atlanta_falcons_loss_in_super_bowl_li_was_an_amazing_catastrophe.html">Patriots’ 25-point comeback against the Falcons</a>? It was by far the biggest ever in a Super Bowl; before Sunday, no team had overcome anything bigger than a 10-point lead. This isn’t just a Super Bowl–based anomaly. In the entire history of the NFL, a team has come back to win just <a href="http://www.profootballhof.com/football-history/greatest-comebacks-in-nfl-history/">four times</a> after trailing by more than 25 points.</p>
<p>You can see the depths to which the Patriots sunk in this win-probability graph provided by ESPN Stats &amp; Information.</p>
<p>It’s possible to look at that image and think, <em>Wow, ain’t sports grand. We watch all of these games because we can’t know with certainty what’s going to happen. The possibility of witnessing low-probability events helps take my mind off the inevitability of my own death.</em></p>
<p>It’s also possible to look at that image and think, <em>Those nerds screwed up again. Forget math.</em></p>
<p>Given that number crunchers got the election <em>and</em> the Super Bowl wrong, the time has come to throw these so-called prognosticators in the ocean and see if they float. But before we do that, I’d like to note that a probability is not a guarantee. The fact that a high-probability event doesn’t end up happening is not evidence that it was really a low-probability event. Or to put it another way, if a model says that something is supposed to happen nearly 100 percent of the time, and it in fact happens 100 percent of the time, you need to tinker with your model.</p>
<p>In this case, it seems weird to mock a calculation that matches our own intuition. We knew in our guts that the Patriots had very little chance to come back from 28-3 down to the Falcons. A win-probability graph attaches a number to that feeling. In the Super Bowl, that number peaked at 99.8 percent—ESPN’s estimated win probability for the Falcons with 6:04 to go in the third quarter.</p>
<p>But while I stand with the probability brigade as a general principle, I do think it’s fair to quibble with these specific probability numbers. In-game win probability, <a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/128369/the-2016-nfl-playoffs-viewed-through-win-probability">which is now <em>de rigueur</em> on sites like ESPN</a>, is an extremely entertaining tool. It also stands to reason that these sorts of pro-football predictions would be more accurate than, say, presidential political forecasts, given that there have been a lot more pro football games than quadrennial American elections. That doesn’t mean, though, that NFL win-probability numbers are correct down to a decimal place.</p>
<p>Brian Burke, who created ESPN’s win-probability algorithm, confessed on Twitter that <a href="https://twitter.com/bburkeESPN/status/828483875177373696">his model was “overconfident”</a> in a Falcons victory. Real-time betting in Las Vegas suggested Atlanta had closer to a 96 percent chance of winning, and Burke said he believed the correct probability was “somewhere between” those two numbers.</p>
<p>In 2013, <a href="http://thebiglead.com/2013/12/21/win-probability-for-nfl-games-how-accurate-is-it/">Jason Lisk of the <em>Big Lead</em> found</a>—albeit in a smallish sample of games—that <a href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/win_prob.cgi">Pro Football Reference’s win-probability calculator</a> also tended to overconfidence. Teams that Pro Football Reference claimed had a 91 to 100 percent chance of victory at the start of the fourth quarter, Lisk determined, won 102 of 111 games when the model predicted they’d win 109.</p>
<p>Why might a win-probability model get things wrong at the extremes? <a href="http://www.advancedfootballanalytics.com/index.php/home/stats/stats-explained/win-probability-and-wpa">As Burke explained in 2014</a>, his calculations take into account score, time, down, distance, and field position. (At the beginning of the game, it also takes into consideration relative team strength as measured by <a href="http://www.espn.com/college-football/statistics/teamratings">ESPN’s Football Power Index</a>, but Burke told me that the “FPI factor gradually fades as the game goes on.”) Some scores and times are a lot more common than others. While there have been thousands upon thousands of NFL games, there’s not a huge amount of data on teams coming back from 25-point third-quarter deficits. As Burke pointed on Twitter, teams that were roughly in the Pats’ position had been 0-190 since 2001:</p>
<p>Because these kinds of comebacks are so rare, Burke told me, it’s very difficult for him to benchmark his model with real NFL data. When sample sizes are smaller, we can be a lot less confident about the predictions we derive from those samples. Based on the evidence we do have and our knowledge of how many points a touchdown is worth, we know the Patriots’ victory in Super Bowl LI was extremely unlikely. It feels like faux precision, however, to say the Falcons were a 99.8 percent favorite with six minutes left to play in the third quarter.</p>
<p>In quantitative terms, there’s not a huge difference between a 96 percent chance of victory and a 99.8 percent chance. But the reality is that we think about those two values very differently. The former is pretty much a done deal. The latter feels like an absolute lock. In the big picture, the win-probability graphs had it right. We just need to be sure not to look at them too closely.</p>Mon, 06 Feb 2017 22:33:48 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/did_the_falcons_really_have_a_99_percent_chance_to_win_the_super_bowl.htmlJosh Levin2017-02-06T22:33:48ZHow close were the Falcons to winning the Super Bowl?SportsDid the Falcons Really Have a 99 Percent Chance to Win the Super Bowl?100170206018footballnflJosh LevinSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/did_the_falcons_really_have_a_99_percent_chance_to_win_the_super_bowl.htmlfalsefalsefalseDid the Falcons really have a 99 percent chance to win the Super Bowl?It was actually 99.8 percent, according to ESPN.Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesTom Brady of the New England Patriots celebrates after the team defeated the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in Super Bowl 51, at NRG Stadium on Sunday night in Houston, Texas.The Greatest, Saddest Super Bowl Everhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_atlanta_falcons_loss_in_super_bowl_li_was_an_amazing_catastrophe.html
<p>The Golden State Warriors blew a 3–1 lead in the NBA Finals. The Cleveland Indians blew a 3–1 lead in the World Series. <a></a>The Atlanta Falcons blew a 28–3 lead in the Super Bowl, which is pretty much a 3–1 lead cubed, so long as you also douse the cube in kerosene, strafe it with a blowtorch, and fumble it on your own 25-yard line while protecting a 16-point cushion in the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>The Cleveland Cavaliers winning a title in LeBron James’ second year back in Ohio was amazing.<a>*</a> The Chicago Cubs winning their first World Series in 108 years was unbelievable. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick winning their fifth NFL title was … certainly something that some people will celebrate. But sports isn’t about championship dreams realized and confetti-strewn victory parades. Sports is failure. Sports is devastation. Sports is losing, horribly and painfully. Sports is your 2016–17 Atlanta Falcons, who somehow ended up on the wrong end of <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/recap?gameId=400927752">a 34–28 overtime defeat in the greatest, saddest Super Bowl ever played</a>.</p>
<p>With six minutes to go in the third quarter, Atlanta was up by 25 points and New England had no choice but to go for it on fourth down from its own 46-yard line. It was sad, really, but what choice did the Patriots have? Matt Ryan looked like Tom Brady, and Tom Brady looked like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Henson">Drew Henson</a>. The champ couldn’t quite connect with his fleet of bearded and/or lacrosse-playing receivers, and he’d been picked off by Robert Alford, whose <a href="https://twitter.com/NFL/status/828404485563092992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">prancing, strutting</a> interception return gave Atlanta a 21–0 second-quarter lead. Even when the Patriots scored to make it 28–9, Stephen Gostkowski doinked the extra point. Pity the poor Pats.</p>
<p>Sometimes you doink the ball, and sometimes the ball destroys your soul. With nine minutes to go and Atlanta with the ball up by 16, ESPN’s win-probability machine <a href="https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/828446880455598082">gave the Falcons a 99.6 percent chance to win the Super Bowl</a>. On that very play, Atlanta running back Tevin Coleman got his ankle crunched under a pile and had to leave the game. The play after that, Ryan was sacked by Dont’a Hightower, and the Patriots recovered his fumble deep in Atlanta territory. They’d score a couple of minutes later to cut the Falcons’ lead to 28–20.</p>
<p>A huge lead insulates you from catastrophe. The Falcons were in such a commanding position that an improbably enormous number of things could go wrong—injuries, sacks, turnovers, ridiculous catches by men with beards—without them managing to cough up the game. Blowing a 99.6 percent chance at victory is the equivalent of losing eight consecutive coin flips. In this case, one of those coin flips was an actual coin flip. If Atlanta had won the toss in overtime, Ryan very well might have led his red-and-black brethren to victory.</p>
<p>But that coin just kept on coming up tails. In fairness, the Patriots made some of their own luck. Belichick, to his great credit, was willing to risk embarrassing his team to improve its odds of victory. That sad, desperation fourth-down attempt in the third quarter could’ve sunk the Patriots. It was also a whole lot smarter than a punt. New England’s will to win didn’t win it the Super Bowl, but the Pats’ relentless pressure did play a part in wearing down the Falcons. The Patriots ran 93 total plays compared with the Falcons’ 46, and New England held the ball for more than 40 minutes. The Falcons’ tired defense gave up 25 points in the fourth quarter and overtime. Atlanta’s historically great offense, meanwhile, scored zero.</p>
<p>Even one of the greatest receivers who’s ever received couldn’t save the Falcons. Julio Jones is so impossibly great that calling him “one of the greatest” football players in history feels like an insult. The catch he made with just less than five minutes to go in the fourth quarter was so extraordinary and so beautiful that it felt impossible that the team he graced with his presence could possibly lose.</p>
<p>The leap, the extension, the tapping toes, the viselike grip that nullifies any ex post facto claim that this catch was not a catch. In a game where so much depends on happenstance, Jones made luck look like a crutch for lesser athletes. But then Ryan got sacked, and then the Falcons got called for a holding penalty—tails, tails—and then Julian Edelman won the Powerball twice while getting struck by lightning.</p>
<p>Robert Alford, again, read Brady’s throw perfectly, jumping up to deflect the pass before it reached Edelman. This time, though, he didn’t catch the ball. With Alford’s momentum knocking him down, the pass fluttered to the ground. Edelman, who was blanketed by two other Falcons—throwing that pass up the seam was not one of Brady’s smartest decisions—reached out his right hand before the ball hit the turf, then secured it with his left by the barest of margins. It was a great play, and a skillful one. It had also been abetted somehow by a poor throw and a great defensive play. Luck can be a hell of a crutch.</p>
<p>The Patriots had <a href="http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-york-giants/0ap2000000146973/Super-Bowl-XLII-David-Tyree-s-helmet-catch">lost a Super Bowl on a play like this</a>. The breaks always even out, right? That’s why Boston’s major sports teams have <a href="http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/john-mcgrath/article129948144.html">37 combined titles, and Atlanta’s have one</a>.</p>
<p>Sports are supposed to be zero sum. There’s always a winner and a loser. But that’s not really true. Sports are negative sum. There are 32 NFL teams, and 31 of them—that’s 97 percent, Falcons fans—finish each year without the pleasure of sticking a big, fat trophy in Roger Goodell’s face. The Patriots, who’ve won five Super Bowls in the past 15 years, are not normal. The success of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and their rotating cast of skill-position players and pass rushers and defensive backs is a crazy outlier. New England’s victory on Sunday night—one in which they overcame a 25-point deficit; the largest previous Super Bowl comeback was 10 points—was an outlier among outliers. If it’s better to be lucky than good, then being lucky and good is best of all.</p>
<p>And the Falcons—oh, the Falcons. When we assess the world’s greatest athletes and the world’s greatest teams, we look at a failure to win as failure full stop rather than a painful, inevitable acquiescence to reality. Victory is as ephemeral as it is abnormal. Losing is the natural state of things. But losing like this, on the biggest stage in sports, with the organization’s first title in the balance, by blowing a huge lead to a franchise that is <a href="https://twitter.com/bostonpolice/status/828450698417278976">comically (and deservedly) self-aggrandizing</a> …</p>
<p><a></a>Sports is failure. Sports is devastation. Sports is losing, horribly and painfully. But sports isn’t usually as horrible and painful as this. A 25-point lead! Come on, Atlanta.</p>
<p><em><strong>*Correction, Feb. 6, 2017: </strong>This story originally misstated that the Cavaliers won a title in LeBron James' first year back in Cleveland. It was his second year.</em> <em>(<a>Return.</a>)</em></p>Mon, 06 Feb 2017 07:08:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_atlanta_falcons_loss_in_super_bowl_li_was_an_amazing_catastrophe.htmlJosh Levin2017-02-06T07:08:00ZThe New England Patriots’ amazing overtime victory was an even more amazing catastrophe for the Atlanta Falcons.SportsSports Is Failure. Sports Is Losing, Horribly and Painfully. Sports Is the Atlanta Falcons.100170206002nflfootballsuper bowlJosh LevinSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_atlanta_falcons_loss_in_super_bowl_li_was_an_amazing_catastrophe.htmlfalsefalsefalseSports is failure. Sports is losing, painfully. Sports is the Atlanta Falcons:A huge lead insulates you from catastrophe. Usually.1519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t531161392100153017232440011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t531161392100153017232440011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t531161392100153017232440011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t531161392100153017232440011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t531161272200153017232440011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t531161272200153017232440011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t531161272200153017232440011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t53116127220015301723244001Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesMatt Ryan of the Atlanta Falcons looks on after being defeated by the New England Patriots during Super Bowl 51 at NRG Stadium on Sunday in Houston.The Super Bowl of Social Mediahttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/live_tweets_about_the_super_bowl_from_top_sports_writers.html
<p>On Sunday night in Houston, the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons will battle for the right to hoist the Lombardi Trophy and will join forces to distract America from Donald Trump. During the game—and during the beer commercials and Lady Gaga's halftime show—you can follow along with our curated lists of the nation's best culture and sports writers. It stands to reason that the sports folks will stay focused on Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, and the action on the field. Will our nation's finest culture minds keep their eyes on the game or will their attentions be directed elsewhere? Watch the columns below to find out.</p>Sun, 05 Feb 2017 22:40:27 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/live_tweets_about_the_super_bowl_from_top_sports_writers.htmlSlate Staff2017-02-05T22:40:27ZWhat Twitter’s smartest culture and sports writers are saying about the Falcons, the Patriots, the commercials, and Lady Gaga.SportsWhat Twitter’s Smartest Culture and Sports Writers Are Saying About the Super Bowl100170205002footballnflSlate StaffSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/live_tweets_about_the_super_bowl_from_top_sports_writers.htmlfalsefalsefalseWhat Twitter’s smartest culture and sports writers are saying about the #SuperBowl:Follow the Patriots and the Falcons (and people who don't care about the Patriots or the Falcons) on social mediaPhoto by Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesTom Brady of the New England Patriots is congratulated by Matt Ryan of the Atlanta Falcons on September 29, 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia.How to Pull for the Patriots in the Age of Trumphttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/is_it_morally_acceptable_to_root_for_the_new_england_patriots_in_the_super.html
<p>It gets harder and harder every time. By virtue of having grown up in the greater Boston area, I am a fan of the New England Patriots, perhaps the most successful and most widely loathed sports franchise of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. For much of my childhood and young adulthood in the 1980s and 1990s, this was a laughable identity—the Patriots mostly vacillated between mediocre and terrible, their two pre-millennial Super Bowl appearances resulting in blowout defeats. This all changed in 2002, when the Pats, under second-year head coach Bill Belichick and first-year starting quarterback Tom Brady, beat the seemingly unbeatable St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI, one of the biggest upsets in NFL history. They won two more titles in 2004 and 2005, improbably establishing themselves as the gold standard of the league, and their coach and QB as gridiron geniuses. In the years since, the Patriots have appeared in three more Super Bowls (four come Sunday) and won one more title in 2015, all while relentlessly building a reputation as the league’s foremost heels, a franchise whose devotion to winning has led it to cheating scandals both <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_videotaping_controversy">real</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflategate">inflated</a>.</p>
<p>That last bit has made it increasingly difficult to be a supporter of this team from a moral and spiritual standpoint, but this year my Pats fan self-hatred shot into the stratosphere with Brady, Belichick, and owner Robert Kraft playing public games of footsie with Donald Trump, the most objectionable presidential candidate of my lifetime. While all three stopped short of endorsing his candidacy, their inexplicable flirtations with Trump have made the team into a symbol for all he represents: In 2016, the Patriots moved from being deplorable to being Deplorable. I didn’t watch most of the regular season out of a combination of apathy and aversion, but as the playoffs rolled around, I once again got sucked in, and against nearly all of my better judgment I’ll be watching them and rooting for them again on Sunday. This has required a considerable amount of psychic gymnastics, so below is my helpful list of tortuous rationalizations for morally compromised Patriots fans who’ll be pulling for that fifth trophy this Sunday night:</p>
<p><strong>Maybe Brady and Belichick didn’t actually vote for Trump. </strong>Look, I saw the #MAGA hat in Brady’s locker just like everyone else and have followed his mealy-mouthed nondenials of support for his thick orange friend. I’m not confident that Brady voted for Hillary Clinton; he grew up in a devout Catholic household with a father who attended seminary for seven years, he attended one of George W. Bush’s State of the Union addresses, and he curiously skipped a 2015 White House visit in order to <a href="http://archive.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/extra_points/2015/04/tom_bradys_white_house_absence_the_most_interestin.html">shop for an Apple Watch</a>. I’m just not sure he voted for Trump, either. Tom Brady is a world-class weirdo who seems focused on three things: his family, his own body, and his football team, in disturbingly ambiguous order. Read this <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/magazine/tom-brady-cannot-stop.html">Mark Leibovich profile</a> of Brady from two years ago and tell me if this sounds like a guy who votes. And even if Brady did vote for Trump, good lord, if I watched sports because I supported the political views of the players, I probably wouldn’t watch sports.</p>
<p>As for Belichick, it’s <a href="http://observer.com/2008/09/why-do-football-coaches-hate-democrats/">long been rumored</a> that he’s a Democrat, and I’m resistant to the idea that there’s a single Wesleyan grad in America who pulled the lever for Trump, even one as illustriously dyspeptic as Belichick. It also just doesn’t fit his personality: Belichick is detail-obsessed, myopically focused, pathologically spotlight-averse. None of this screams affinity with our current resident of the White House. So whither the letter? Days before the election <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/patriots/2016/11/09/new-england-patriots-bill-belichick-donald-trump/93535980/">Trump read aloud a letter of “support”</a> from Belichick (which stopped short of endorsing his candidacy) at a campaign rally in New Hampshire. My working theory is that Belichick was prodded into his pro-Trump statement by Pats owner Robert Kraft, one of Trump’s most prominent friends in the sports community. If true this is horrific, but pro sports owners are a horrific bunch, and even if Kraft voted for Trump (he, too, has been close-lipped on the matter, and has a history of supporting candidates from both sides of the aisle), he at least hasn’t been tapped for a post in his administration, as Todd Ricketts (Chicago Cubs), Betsy DeVos (Orlando Magic), and Woody Johnson (New York Jets) have.</p>
<p><strong>Trump may love the Patriots, but the vast majority of Trump supporters will be rooting for the Falcons on Sunday. </strong>Fine, in fairness, the vast majority of Hillary Clinton supporters will be rooting for the Falcons on Sunday, too—hating the Patriots is perhaps the last truly bipartisan pastime in America. But the average Trump supporter, with his hatred of coastal elites and preoccupation with law and order, likely despises the Patriots with particular intensity, for their extremely coastal and extremely elite (again—<em>Wesleyan</em>) and distinctly cheater-ly approach to their sport.</p>
<p>What’s more, it’s a taken-for-granted truism that the only people in America who root for the Patriots are residents of the six New England states, where Trump was soundly defeated. In Massachusetts, Clinton beat Trump by a whopping 27 percentage points. So not only is there a high probability that the typical Trump supporter hates the Patriots, there are an awful lot of Patriots supporters who hate Trump, too. Even if we take Belichick’s letter and Brady’s stupid hat as “endorsements” there’s no evidence that they moved the electoral needle for Trump. There’s also a decent chance a lot of the Patriots themselves hate Trump: Earlier this week the team’s tight end, Martellus Bennett, one of the NFL’s most interesting and magnetic humans, <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2017/01/31/martellus-bennett-thinks-too-many-players-put-their-brand-over-their-word/TepozC4Q43inTp3dBMMTKI/story.html">announced that he’d likely decline a White House invitation</a> were the Patriots to win a Super Bowl.</p>
<p><strong>To root for the Patriots is to root against the NFL and its commissioner, who desperately wants the Patriots to lose. </strong>This is my main and perhaps only completely earnest rationalization for supporting the Patriots this Sunday. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is a distinctly Trumpian figure: the self-aggrandizing obsession with law and order, the worshipful attachment to billionaires and their presumed inherent virtues. Like Trump, Goodell is the son of a powerful and more impressive father who was born on third base and has mostly failed upward from there. (Trump himself, in a stunning combination of pot-kettle and correct-stopped-clock, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/magazine/the-uncomfortable-love-affair-between-donald-trump-and-the-new-england-patriots.html?_r=0">has characterized Goodell</a> as “a weak guy,” “a dope,” and “a stupid guy.”)</p>
<p>The league that Goodell represents is a cesspool for corporate oligarchy and the patriotism of scoundrels. It treats human bodies as disposable and has the worst labor conditions of any major professional sport, despite being the most lucrative. Earlier this season, when 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick made the decision to simply not stand for the national anthem as <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/colin_kaepernick_s_protest_is_working.html">a protest</a> against racial injustice and police brutality, hordes of fans organized a “#BoycottNFL” movement under the asinine logic that Kaepernick’s protest was disrespectful to the U.S. military (incidentally, one of the NFL’s corporate partners). Then-nominee Donald Trump suggested Kaepernick <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/08/donald-trump-colin-kaepernick-new-country-national-anthem-protest-response">leave the country</a>. When the NFL’s ratings dropped, Goodell issued a cursory defense of Kaepernick’s right to free expression that the commish carefully drowned out in dog whistles, including this incredible passage: “I support our players when they want to see change in society, and we don’t live in a perfect society. We live in an imperfect society. On the other hand, we believe very strongly in patriotism in the NFL. I personally believe very strongly in that.” Whatever “patriotism” is extolled in this passage is pretty disgusting.</p>
<p>Goodell and the Patriots despise each other, as the yearslong cycle of suspensions, challenges, appeals, and resuspensions has driven home. (Brady missed the first four games of this season as punishment for Deflategate, nearly two full years after the alleged malfeasance had occurred.) Goodell hasn’t attended a game at Gillette Stadium since before the controversy, a startling absence considering the Patriots are, ends-wise if not means-wise, his league’s banner franchise. As <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/13533995/split-nfl-new-england-patriots-apart">ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham reported</a> back in 2015, from the start Deflategate was taken up by Goodell and his billionaire bosses as a clunky vehicle for a quixotic revenge quest for the commissioner’s own bungling of the Patriots’ “Spygate” misdeeds of 2007. To watch Goodell forced to share a podium with Belichick and Brady this Sunday, handing over a fifth Lombardi Trophy that would solidify the 21<sup>st</sup>-century Pats as the greatest sustained dynasty the NFL has ever seen, would be like watching Trump in a weight-lifting competition with Arnold Schwarzenegger—you might not be actually rooting for either, but you’re sure savoring the certain embarrassment of one of the parties.</p>
<p>I’ve often said that rooting for the Patriots feels like rooting for the Joker in a Christopher Nolan Batman film—they’re psychotically single-minded, amoral, gallingly narcissistic, purveyors of opportunistic, meticulous chaos. But what if the Joker is right? What if Gotham is irredeemable and Batman is even worse? I’m just about done with the NFL and everything it stands for, and an increasingly large part of me hopes I’m too good to ever watch another professional football game after this one. But I’m not too good to want to go out on top.</p>Fri, 03 Feb 2017 10:53:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/is_it_morally_acceptable_to_root_for_the_new_england_patriots_in_the_super.htmlJack Hamilton2017-02-03T10:53:00ZA guide for morally compromised New England fans.SportsHow and Why to Root for the New England Patriots in the Age of Trump100170203003sportsfootballpoliticssuper bowlJack HamiltonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/is_it_morally_acceptable_to_root_for_the_new_england_patriots_in_the_super.htmlfalsefalsefalseA Patriots fan reveals his tortured rationalizations for still supporting the team:A guide for morally compromised Pats fans.Jim Rogash/Getty ImagesPatriots head coach Bill Belichick talks with Tom Brady before a game against the Seattle Seahawks at Gillette Stadium on Nov. 13 in Foxboro, Massachusetts.Is Russell Westbrook a Rebound Thief?http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/russell_westbrook_averages_a_triple_double_is_he_padding_his_stats.html
<p>Russell Westbrook is having one of the most extraordinary seasons of all time. As the star player on an otherwise mediocre team, the Oklahoma City Thunder point guard has accrued an absurd collection of box score numbers. Some of those stats, though, are more absurd than others. Westbrook is averaging <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/scoring-per-game/sort/avgPoints/year/2017/seasontype/2">30.8 points per game</a>, which is very impressive, but plenty of guards (<a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=single&amp;type=per_game&amp;per_minute_base=36&amp;per_poss_base=100&amp;season_start=1&amp;season_end=-1&amp;lg_id=NBA&amp;age_min=0&amp;age_max=99&amp;is_playoffs=N&amp;height_min=0&amp;height_max=99&amp;birth_country_is=Y&amp;as_comp=gt&amp;pos_is_g=Y&amp;pos_is_gf=Y&amp;force%3Apos_is=1&amp;c1stat=pts_per_g&amp;c1comp=gt&amp;c1val=30&amp;c6mult=1.0&amp;order_by=ws">33, to be exact</a>) have matched that kind of production over a full season. As the main distributor on his team, he’s also piled up <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/assists/sort/avgAssists/year/2017/seasontype/2">10.2 assists per game</a>. That figure is also spectacular, but far from unprecedented <a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=single&amp;type=per_game&amp;per_minute_base=36&amp;per_poss_base=100&amp;season_start=1&amp;season_end=-1&amp;lg_id=NBA&amp;age_min=0&amp;age_max=99&amp;is_playoffs=N&amp;height_min=0&amp;height_max=99&amp;birth_country_is=Y&amp;as_comp=gt&amp;pos_is_g=Y&amp;pos_is_gf=Y&amp;force%3Apos_is=1&amp;c1stat=ast_per_g&amp;c1comp=gt&amp;c1val=10&amp;c6mult=1.0&amp;order_by=ws">on its own</a>. What makes Westbrook’s season so extraordinary are his <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/rebounds/sort/avgRebounds/year/2017/seasontype/2">10.6 rebounds</a> per game. If he finishes the year with more than 10 boards per contest, he’ll be one of only <a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=single&amp;type=per_game&amp;per_minute_base=36&amp;per_poss_base=100&amp;season_start=1&amp;season_end=-1&amp;lg_id=NBA&amp;age_min=0&amp;age_max=99&amp;is_playoffs=N&amp;height_min=0&amp;height_max=99&amp;birth_country_is=Y&amp;as_comp=gt&amp;pos_is_g=Y&amp;pos_is_gf=Y&amp;force%3Apos_is=1&amp;c1stat=trb_per_g&amp;c1comp=gt&amp;c1val=10&amp;c6mult=1.0&amp;order_by=ws">four guards</a> to hit that mark. And if he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/sports/russell-westbrook-nba-triple-double-oklahoma-city-thunder.html?_r=0">finishes the year averaging double figures</a> in points, assists, and rebounds, he’ll match an achievement that’s been accomplished only once before, by <a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/roberos01.html">Oscar Robertson</a> in the 1961–62 season.</p>
<p>Given the relative lack of talent around him, it would be hard to argue that Westbrook is hurting his team by averaging a triple-double. It is possible, though, that he’s <a href="http://dailythunder.com/russell-westbrook-triple-doubles-and-stat-padding-accusations/">padding his stats</a>, especially his rebounds. Those rebounds are the astounding part of Westbrook’s season, the missing piece of the triple-double that guards almost never achieve. Rebounds require height, wingspan, and proximity to the basket, making them difficult for guards to haul in by comparison with their taller and more rim-adjacent counterparts. Westbrook, who is listed at 6-foot-3, defies that notion. He’s taking in <a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=single&amp;type=per_game&amp;per_minute_base=36&amp;per_poss_base=100&amp;season_start=1&amp;season_end=-1&amp;lg_id=NBA&amp;age_min=0&amp;age_max=99&amp;is_playoffs=N&amp;height_min=0&amp;height_max=99&amp;birth_country_is=Y&amp;as_comp=gt&amp;pos_is_g=Y&amp;pos_is_gf=Y&amp;force%3Apos_is=1&amp;c1stat=g&amp;c1comp=gt&amp;c1val=20&amp;c6mult=1.0&amp;order_by=trb_pct">17 percent of his team’s available boards</a>, the highest for a guard with more than 20 games played since 1971. (Next on the list: Wiley Peck of the 1979–80 San Antonio Spurs, at 15.6 percent).</p>
<p>It seems logical that Westbrook is grabbing more rebounds this season. Since Kevin Durant left, the Thunder has <a href="http://www.nba.com/article/2016/11/11/one-team-three-stats-oklahoma-city-thunder-offensive-regression">predictably fallen</a> to sixth in the Western Conference, and Westbrook has had to play heroically to keep his team from dipping even further in the standings. But while one could imagine Westbrook making a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/5fg034/westbrook_stat_padding_for_his_15th_rebound/">heroic effort</a> to supplement the rebounding abilities of his less-talented teammates, there’s little evidence that’s what’s happening. According to play-by-play data, the Thunder scoops up just more than 1 percent more of the available rebounds when Westbrook is on the floor compared with when he’s on the bench. Altogether, that amounts to an extra rebound or two per game when he’s on the court, a margin similar to what he produced last year.</p>
<p>Westbrook isn’t achieving his insane rebound totals at the expense of the Thunder’s opponents. He’s grabbing all those rebounds from his own teammates. As <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/5qat1j/statistically_analysis_russell_westbrooks/?st=iyg9nsym&amp;sh=92131424">a Reddit user recently pointed out</a>, most of <a href="http://fansided.com/2016/12/05/kennedy-meeks-2017-nba-draft/">the increase</a> in Westbrook’s rebounding this season comes on <a href="http://stats.nba.com/players/defensive-rebounding/#!?sort=DREB_UNCONTEST&amp;dir=1">uncontested defensive rebounds</a>—those for which no opposing player makes an attempt at the ball. Westbrook leads the league in that stat, coming in ahead of big men like Anthony Davis, Andre Drummond, DeAndre Jordan, and Hassan Whiteside.</p>
<p>If several Thunder players can grab the ball, why is Westbrook always the one who does? It <a href="http://www.espn.com/espnradio/play?id=18167677">may be</a> a matter <a href="https://mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/28AB2730E91432134400392466432_597b112affa.43.0.56161B28-6E7D-4DC4-BAEA-991A58EB5C04.mp4?versionId=GL_iej_GnMNDV.kkj5xrZXvwFiaVGklr">of scheme or coaching</a> rather than selfishness. Whether they’ve been told to clear the runway for Westbrook or not, Westbrook’s teammates are certainly on board. “We’d rather it be him [getting the rebound],” <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18240823/how-russell-westbrook-chasing-triple-doubles-helps-oklahoma-city-thunder">Steven Adams told ESPN’s Royce Young</a> earlier this year.</p>
<p>Might this be a smart strategic choice? Westbrook is an offensive dynamo, so getting the ball in his hands as quickly as possible could help create fast-break opportunities and open shots. The numbers, though, don’t suggest that Westbrook’s defensive boards are especially valuable. In general, we know that uncontested boards are worth <a href="http://nyloncalculus.com/2015/01/19/bounding-stealin-examining-value-rebound-types/">about half as much</a> to an NBA team as contested ones. With regard to Westbrook specifically, the Thunder averages 1.079 points per possession after he grabs a defensive rebound. When someone else on the team gets the rebound with Westbrook on the floor, the team gets 1.065 points per possession. That’s a difference of a little more than 1 point per 100 possessions—small enough to be inconsequential. And if you look at other indexes of offensive success (like turnovers or <a href="http://fansided.com/2016/12/05/nylon-calculus-westbrook-triple-doubles/">shooting percentage</a>), there is no ironclad statistical evidence that Westbrook grabbing the defensive board helps the Thunder offense in any way.</p>
<p>Then again, there’s no sign that Westbrook’s vulturing of all those uncontested rebounds harms the team, either. Westbrook, then, is stat padding in the sense that he’s vacuuming up boards that might normally go to the team’s big men. But it’s with their permission, and it doesn’t seem to be doing any damage—if anything, it seems to help the Thunder, albeit in an extremely minimal way.</p>
<p>In combination with his questionable defense and <a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/128552/russell-westbrook-at-his-worst-for-a-triple-double">penchant for turnovers</a>, Westbrook’s insane stats present a quandary for MVP voters. They must weigh Westbrook’s gaudy (if inflated) traditional accomplishments against his <a href="http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_2017_advanced.html">advanced</a> numbers, which look much less glowing. (Westbrook ranks fourth in <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/sort/RPM">ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus</a>, for example, behind superior defenders Chris Paul, Kyle Lowry, and Jimmy Butler). If Westbrook does average a triple-double, that achievement will be very hard to ignore. But voters should recognize that, like many <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilt_Chamberlain's_100-point_game">such accomplishments</a>, such a feat will require a lot of skill, a little bit of luck, and some help from his teammates.</p>Tue, 31 Jan 2017 21:55:48 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/russell_westbrook_averages_a_triple_double_is_he_padding_his_stats.htmlRob Arthur2017-01-31T21:55:48ZThe Oklahoma City Thunder point guard averages a triple-double. He also stands accused of padding his stats.SportsIs Triple-Double Machine Russell Westbrook Padding His Stats?100170131011sportsnbabasketballRob ArthurSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/russell_westbrook_averages_a_triple_double_is_he_padding_his_stats.htmlfalsefalsefalseIs triple-double machine Russell Westbrook padding his stats?If several Thunder players can grab the ball, why is Westbrook always the one who does?Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty ImagesRussell Westbrook grabs a rebound against the Phoenix Suns on Oct. 28 at the Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City.Roll Tigershttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/clemson_beat_alabama_by_becoming_alabama.html
<p>Clemson won the national championship on a pick play. <a href="http://www.si.com/college-football/2017/01/10/clemson-tigers-national-championship-alabama-crimson-tide">Sorry, a “rub route,”</a> one in which Alabama cornerback Marlon Humphrey got picked—er, rubbed—at the goal line, allowing Tigers wide receiver and future New England Patriots draftee Hunter Renfrow to break wide open for the last-second, game-winning score in Clemson’s 35–31 victory. This was a scandal! This was interference! This was the exact same play Alabama used to win a tight game against LSU two years ago!</p>
<p>It’s not surprising that the two best teams in college football would dabble in red-zone frottage. Every team does whatever it takes to score—at least, every team that’s serious about winning a national title. Still, it was fitting that the Tigers won their title-game rematch against what was supposed to be <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/alabama-is-oh-so-close-to-being-the-best-team-in-history/">Nick Saban’s best team ever</a> by doing Alabama things to Alabama. Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, who won a national championship as a player at Alabama in 1992 and coached at the school from 1993 to 2000, molded his team in the image of the Crimson Tide.</p>
<p>Under Saban, Alabama won four titles in seven years thanks to a simple championship formula: Get the best players in the country and put them in position to succeed. The Tide gets more five-star recruits—the best of the best high school players—<a href="http://bamahammer.com/2016/02/04/alabama-has-more-five-stars-than-the-b1g-pac-or-big-12/">than most <em>conferences</em> bring in collectively</a>. Alabama has signed <a href="http://gridironnow.com/college-football-playoff-recruiting/">23 five-star players in the past five years</a>. Clemson has signed five. Those high school heroes get faster, stronger, and smarter once they get to campus. Saban’s defensive linemen, linebackers, corners, and safeties always <a href="https://twitter.com/Ben_Litvin/status/816734961910894593">seem to know what play is coming</a>. They don’t give up touchdowns because they don’t make mistakes. And when Saban saw high-tempo, no-huddle offenses shake up the sport, he brought in Lane Kiffin to modernize his team’s offense, <a href="http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/article29368825.html">ensuring that Alabama’s superior skill players</a> wouldn’t be hamstrung by an outdated system.</p>
<p>Clemson lost last year’s title game 45–40 because it screwed up one too many times. In particular, the Tigers <a href="http://www.si.com/college-football/2016/01/12/oj-howard-alabama-clemson-highlights-video-national-championship">seemed to forget that tight end O.J. Howard was an eligible receiver</a>. The Tigers did it again on Monday night, allowing the perpetually-underutilized-except-against-Clemson Howard to break free for a long touchdown pass that gave Alabama a 24–14 lead late in the third quarter.</p>
<p>That was … not good. It was also an outlier, the only glaring mental blunder I can recall either team making all night. This was professional football, played by athletes who are coached by professionals and trained like professionals and essentially are professionals except for the getting-paid-more-than-the-fixed-cost-of-a-college-scholarship part. If the Howard play was an unusual departure, Clemson linebacker Ben Boulware’s read of quarterback Jalen Hurts’ sweep in the second quarter represents everything the Tigers did right. Boulware knew the play was coming, told his teammates to move over to stop it, and then led a marauding horde into the Alabama backfield, where Hurts got tackled for a 4-yard loss.</p>
<p>This is the kind of thing Alabama does to other teams. The Crimson Tide make you look bad, and they make you feel dumb. But Clemson wasn’t outclassed or outsmarted on Monday night. Although the Tigers’ talent isn’t on par with Alabama’s at every roster spot, Clemson’s lineup is pretty damn loaded. <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/columnist/george-schroeder/2017/01/07/mike-williams-impact-clemson-tigers-college-football-playoff-championship-game/96302846/">Wide receiver Mike Williams</a> was the freakiest athlete in Raymond James Stadium, and <a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/acc/post/_/id/97503/wilkins-lawrence-give-clemson-dynamic-duo-on-defense">young defensive linemen Dexter Lawrence and Christian Wilkins</a> led a Clemson front seven that pressured Hurts into his worst passing performance all year. Boulware and the Tigers defense knew what Alabama wanted to do, and Deshaun Watson and the Clemson offense kept the Tide off balance with formation shifts, jet sweeps, and up-tempo play-calling—various gadgetry that forced Alabama’s gaggle of five-stars to account for all manner of speedy, orange-legged playmakers: Williams, Renfrow, receiver Deon Cain, running back Wayne Gallman, tight end Jordan Leggett, Watson himself.</p>
<p>The Southeastern Conference—especially the sliver of the SEC that’s based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama—wins the most football games because it invests the most in winning football games. SEC teams draw <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-football-attendance-in-2016-crowds-decline-for-sixth-straight-year/">by far the biggest crowds</a>, and they <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/4/26/11456612/athletic-department-finances-sec-big-ten-pac-12-acc">bring in by far the most money</a>. Alabama’s strength coach <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000670885/article/alabama-raises-strength-coachs-salary-to-525000-a-year">gets paid like a head coach</a>. Saban hired Steve Sarkisian, who coached the Tide offense in the title game after the ritual execution of Kiffin, specifically <a href="http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/index.ssf/2017/01/what_did_steve_sarkisian_do_be.html">to help with “third-down offensive strategy.”</a> The Alabama football facility includes <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2013/8/1/4578810/alabama-football-building-pictures">a climate-controlled room to house its star athletes’ footwear</a>. These are the things you do when you’re running a program that <a href="http://nesn.com/2017/01/alabama-earned-more-than-100-million-in-revenue-in-2016/">generates more than $100 million in annual revenue</a> and you don’t have to spend that cash on the talent.</p>
<p>It was clear from watching the last two title games that Clemson is SEC-level serious about putting a national title–grade product on the field. And it is clear from looking at <a href="https://spark.adobe.com/page/b8HAd/">this snazzy online presentation</a> that Clemson is beyond SEC-level serious about building a national title–grade football facility. That $55 million building, which is scheduled to open in the next few months, will include an “outdoor village” with a beach volleyball court, a laser tag venue, and <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/12/13/13945552/clemson-facility-slide-photos-video">an indoor slide</a>, all of which seem like a lot of fun, and all of which also seem like great ways to test whether a player has passed the concussion protocol. In a world where paying quarterbacks and receivers is a bad idea because, per Alabama athletic director Bill Battle, <a href="http://www.al.com/alabamafootball/index.ssf/2015/12/alabama_ad_bill_battle_explain.html">they’ll spend that cash on “tattoos and rims,”</a> fashioning an indoor slide is the best way for a program to indicate that it’s a big player in the business of college athletics. As of 2017, Clemson is a very, very big player. Whee!</p>
<p>All the progress Clemson has made on roster and facility construction since Swinney took over as head coach in 2008 gave the South Carolina school the opportunity to make the national championship game. But it took a player, Deshaun Watson, to win it. In his <a href="http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2017/01/10/clemsons-deshaun-watson-its-my-time-to-go-to-the-nfl/">last game as a collegian</a>, the Clemson quarterback got knocked around on the ground and in the air.</p>
<p>But against the best defense in the country, Watson threw for 420 yards and three touchdowns, and he glided around right end <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/deshaun-watson-vs-vince-young-who-had-the-better-championship-game-showing/">like Vince Young in the 2006 Rose Bowl</a> to set up another score. Alabama’s players knew what they needed to do to stop him. They just couldn’t do it. Clemson won because the best player on the field wore orange rather than crimson. Is it too late to install a Deshaun Watson statue next to that beach volleyball court?</p>Tue, 10 Jan 2017 19:10:56 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/clemson_beat_alabama_by_becoming_alabama.htmlJosh Levin2017-01-10T19:10:56ZTo beat Alabama, Clemson had to become Alabama.SportsHow Did Clemson Beat Alabama? By Becoming Alabama.100170110009sportsncaafootballJosh LevinSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/clemson_beat_alabama_by_becoming_alabama.htmlfalsefalsefalseRoll Tigers: Clemson beat Alabama by becoming Alabama.Clemson is SEC-level serious about putting a national title–grade product on the field.1519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t527689380900152355759330011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t527689380900152355759330011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t527689380900152355759330011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t52768938090015235575933001Streeter Lecka/Getty ImagesClemson Tigers quarterback Deshaun Watson celebrates after throwing the game-winning touchdown pass against the Alabama Crimson Tide on Monday in Florida.Could an NFL Team Miss the Playoffs With a 13–3 Record?http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/what_s_the_best_record_an_nfl_team_could_have_and_still_miss_the_playoffs.html
<p>The New England Patriots finished the regular season 14–2, earning the top seed in the AFC playoffs. There was never much doubt that the Pats, led by quarterbacks Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett, would make the postseason. Since the NFL playoffs expanded to five teams per conference in 1978, no team with a record of 12–4 or better has ever been left out. (The postseason was further expanded to six teams per conference in 1990.) Just two teams with 11–5 records—the 1985 Denver Broncos and Matt Cassel’s 2008 Patriots—have missed the playoffs. But let’s forget reality. Is it theoretically possible for a 13–3 team to stay home for the postseason? What about 14–2? 15–1?</p>
<p>In each conference, the winners of all four divisions get an automatic ticket to the playoffs. They’re joined by two wild-card teams: the two non–division winners with the best records. If two or more teams finish with the same record, that <a href="http://www.nfl.com/standings/tiebreakingprocedures">tie is broken by a series of increasingly arcane rules</a>. (Wild-card tiebreaker No. 10: best net touchdowns in all games.)</p>
<p>So, what we want to know is: In a given NFL conference, what’s the best possible record for the third-best non–division winner?</p>
<p>To figure that out, you need to <a href="http://operations.nfl.com/the-game/creating-the-nfl-schedule/">understand the league’s schedule formula</a>. There are four divisions per conference, and each of those divisions has four teams. Every NFL team plays the following set of regular-season games:</p>
<ul>
<li>Two games each against its division rivals. The AFC North’s Baltimore Ravens, for instance, play home and away games against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cincinnati Bengals, and Cleveland Browns.</li>
<li>One game each against all four teams from another division in its own conference. This season, every AFC North team played every AFC East team.</li>
<li>One game each against opponents from the remaining two divisions in its own conference. The Ravens played the Jacksonville Jaguars from the AFC South and the Oakland Raiders from the AFC West.</li>
<li>One game each against all four teams from a division in the opposite conference. This season, the AFC North played the NFC East.</li>
</ul>
<p>Each team plays nine of the 15 possible opponents in its own conference. Since certain teams don’t play each other—the AFC’s Ravens and Houston Texans didn’t face off in 2016, for instance—it’s possible for there to be two 16–0 teams in the same conference. Both undefeated teams would make the playoffs as division winners, since they would’ve had to beat every team in their own division twice to finish 16–0.</p>
<p>To make an extremely obvious point: If two teams play each other, one of them is going to lose unless the game ends in a tie. To engineer a scenario in which the third-best non–division winner has the best possible record, you need to find a set of teams that play each other the bare minimum number of times. That way, everybody in that set can pile up wins without beating each other.</p>
<p>Given the NFL’s scheduling rules, for any set of seven teams in the same conference, the fewest number of intra-set games is 12. That set—let’s call it the Spectacular Seven—will have two teams from Division A, two from Division B, two from Division C, and one from Division D. (Any other divisional split, whether it’s 3–2–1–1 or 3–2–2 or 4–2–1 or 4–3, will necessarily have more intra-set games than a 2–2–2–1 split.) Now, let’s assume that every team in the Spectacular Seven wins all of its games outside the group. <a href="http://nflplayoffpredictor.com/?L=IwJgDMkq0nkXjUypvnWVpmi2Wcu6SeSM5Z4+ma+Nsu1FedWF2mBKqxrnZetkihEGHsOSD0nBPQLgcDTmFVggA">I set up such a scenario using the website NFL Playoff Predictor</a> with the AFC North, AFC South, AFC East, and AFC West as Divisions A, B, C, and D respectively. The two AFC North teams, the Ravens and Steelers, are 12–0. The two AFC South teams, the Texans and Tennessee Titans, are 13–0. The two AFC East teams, the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets, are 12–0. And the lone AFC West team, the San Diego Chargers, is 14–0.</p>
<p>The Chargers, though, are irrelevant here—they’re going to make the playoffs as a division winner. So let’s trim the Spectacular Seven to the Super Six and give victories to the Chargers’ two opponents in their matchups against San Diego. <a href="http://nflplayoffpredictor.com/?L=IwJgDMkq0nkXjUypvnWVpmi2Wcu6SeSM5Z4+ma+NsuptkK9F2mBblbrX6PpUQY+qUUJ5JE9TMRks5YZUA">That leaves us with</a> two 12–0 teams in the AFC North (Ravens and Steelers), two 12–0 teams in the AFC East (Bills and Jets), and two 14–0 teams in the AFC South (Texans and Titans). And that leaves 10 remaining games between members of the Super Six: Ravens at Steelers, Steelers at Ravens, Bills at Ravens, Ravens at Jets, Jets at Steelers, Steelers at Bills, Texans at Titans, Titans at Texans, Bills at Jets, and Jets at Bills. That gives us 10 wins and 10 losses to distribute across the Super Six.</p>
<p>In the AFC South, Houston and Tennessee can finish 16–0 and 14–2; 15–1 and 15–1; 15–0–1 and 14–1–1; or 14–0–2 and 14–0–2. (The NFL considers tie games the equivalent of half a win and half a loss, so 14–0–2 is the same as 15–1 for tiebreaking purposes.) To maximize the record of our division runner-up, let’s have the <a href="http://nflplayoffpredictor.com/?L=IwJgDMkq0nkXjUypvnWVbRTv4uOR2kMSKMi5JeBsYm2FlW5zTGp6ZHPuqUIi4DUXSnXbBqWTPBlJMYZWCA">Texans and Titans split their two games and each finish 15–1</a>.</p>
<p>Now we have eight games to play among four teams, all of them members of the AFC North and AFC East. Those four teams must go a collective 8–8 in those games, through some combination of wins and losses (or in the case of ties, as many as 16 half-wins and 16 half-losses). For all four of these teams to finish 15–1 or better—leaving the third-best non–division winner with a 15–1 record—the group would have to go a collective 12–4 in these eight games, which is sadly impossible under current NFL rules. For all four of these teams to finish 14–1–1 or better—leaving the third-best non–division winner with a 14–1–1 record—the group would have to go a collective 8–4–4, which again is illegal. Thanks, Commissioner Goodell. The best we can do is have every team go 2–2, leaving us with four teams with identical 14–2 records. In that case, the Texans and Titans make the playoffs at 15–1, as do three of the four 14–2 teams from the AFC North and AFC East. Which unlucky team gets left out? <a href="http://nflplayoffpredictor.com/?L=IwJm9UxH2sqVnFsbTvVisPnzCdBSRJdFJc-ZYiUjKPY3Q7euqk5BtUtvv0YUu1PvkwgADDKlA">When I played it out on NFL Playoff Predictor, it was the Jets</a>. Realistic!</p>
<p>So, yes, a 14–2 team can miss the playoffs. Or, consider an alternative scenario: If every one of the eight games described above ended in a tie, the four top teams in the AFC North and AFC East would all finish 12–0–4, which is equivalent to 14–2. That means a team could win 12 games, go undefeated, and still miss the postseason.</p>
<p>That’s not all: It’s possible for <em>two</em> 14–2 teams in the same conference to miss the playoffs. Let’s expand the Super Six to the Excellent Eight: two teams each from every division in the same conference. For any such set of eight teams, the fewest number of intra-set games is 16—each member of the Excellent Eight plays four games against its fellow group members. If the Excellent Eight teams beat everyone else, <a href="http://nflplayoffpredictor.com/?L=IwJgDMkq0nkXlUNIpvOsrTNFs2ceyWUi+Gl+xwFSNdBme4hSyBONWm2qTdGl5EhHcK1HDG6arKSsuWEhG7cwGsEA">they’ll all start with a record of 12–0</a>. If those eight 12–0 teams all split their remaining four games, <a href="http://nflplayoffpredictor.com/?L=IwJm9UxH2s6VoqsbTgrSPu+lZVBSVCPQ8svNAqpTLGqU5bCY3Ulwtbn9iQxlMDZkLYwADDKlA">we’ll have eight 14–2 teams</a>, two of which miss the playoffs. Again, there aren’t enough collective wins and ties to go around for a nonplayoff team to finish 15–1 or 14–1–1.</p>
<p>Last question: What’s the worst possible record for an NFL playoff team? Let’s imagine all four teams in one incredibly putrid division—we’ll call it the NFC South—lose every one of their out-of-division games, leaving them 0–10 before starting division play. If every team splits its six remaining games, one of them will emerge as a 3–13 division winner. (<a href="http://nflplayoffpredictor.com/?L=IwJm9UxH2s6VoqsbTgrSPu+lZVBSVCPQ8svNAqpTLGqU5bCY3Ulwtbn9iQxlMDZkLYwADDKlA">Who dat!</a>) If every one of those intra-division games ends in a tie, the NFL will have an 0–10–6 playoff team. So, take heart, Browns fans: There is a path to victory for a winless pro football team.</p>
<p>It’s possible I’ve missed something. If you’ve got a different answer for any of the questions above or a better proof, leave it in the comments or <a href="mailto:josh@josh-levin.com">send me an email</a>. I’m also curious to know the best record an NBA and MLB team could have and miss the playoffs, as well as the worst record for a potential playoff team in either of those sports. If you’ve got thoughts on that, <a href="mailto:josh@josh-levin.com">drop me a line</a>.</p>
<p><em>Thanks to Gideon Rosinplotz for the question and to Rick Barnard, Kate Hill, and Daryn Ramsden for help thinking through the problem.</em></p>Thu, 05 Jan 2017 21:26:10 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/what_s_the_best_record_an_nfl_team_could_have_and_still_miss_the_playoffs.htmlJosh Levin2017-01-05T21:26:10ZWhat about 14–2? 15–1?SportsCould an NFL Team Miss the Playoffs With a 13–3 Record? 14–2? 15–1?100170105013sportsnflfootballJosh LevinSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/01/what_s_the_best_record_an_nfl_team_could_have_and_still_miss_the_playoffs.htmlfalsefalsefalseCould an NFL team miss the playoffs with a 13–3 Record? 14–2? 15–1?And what’s the worst possible record for a playoff team?Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesNew England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick looks on from the sideline during a game against the Denver Broncos on Dec. 18 in Denver.Heel in Chiefhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/12/donald_trump_learned_his_political_moves_from_wwe.html
<p>Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the Small Business Administration, will carry several distinctions should she be confirmed. McMahon, the former president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, who has also appeared at pro wrestling events as a fictionalized version of herself, will be the first Cabinet-level official who has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFSv8w4YHrw">received the Stone Cold Stunner</a> from Steve Austin. She will be the first to have been <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwamCFdjGXM">Tombstone Piledriven</a> by the Demon Kane. And she will be the first to have <a href="https://youtu.be/kKG7K43f2zM?t=4m45s">kicked WWE announcer Jim Ross</a> in the crotch.</p>
<p>It may be surreal to see Trump offer a professional wrestling magnate a role in his administration, but it’s not surprising. After all, the president-elect is in the WWE Hall of Fame, has hosted two WrestleManias at Trump properties, and even headlined one in 2007, resulting in that photo you may have seen of <a href="http://www.pwpnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/donald-trump-mcmahon-head-shave.jpg">Trump helping to shave the head of Vince McMahon</a>, Linda’s husband and the WWE founder, in the middle of the ring.</p>
<p>Like Linda McMahon, Donald Trump played an exaggerated version of himself in WWE programming. You could argue he’s played a character for much of his professional life, particularly during (and since) the 2016 presidential campaign—<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/hate_in_america_a_list_of_racism_bigotry_and_abuse_since_the_election.html">with no regard for the consequences</a>. Specifically, Trump has acted like what’s known in wrestling as the “heel”: the villain who breaks the rules and insults his opponents to get “heat”—a reaction—from the audience. The best heels make their wrestling promotions money: The audience pays to see them eventually get their comeuppance at the hands of the baby-faced hero (or simply “face”).</p>
<p>Trump is a textbook heel. In fact, almost everything he’s done since announcing his candidacy in June 2015 has a pro-wrestling analogue, from his attacks on Mexicans and women to his Islamophobic attitude toward Muslims. Like a heel, he’s broken rules of political discourse and conduct, then accused his opponents of doing the same thing. Most notably, he complained of a system that was rigged against him until he won the ultimate prize, like a heel that complains about a referee’s bias until the same referee doesn’t catch him cheating. At no time during the campaign or the transition has Trump been playing by the rules of politics: He’s been playing—and winning—by the rules of pro wrestling.</p>
<p>Trump’s entrance into the world of wrestling, and his acquaintance with the McMahons, began as the type of low-risk, high-reward business opportunity that he’s relied on throughout his business career: Hosting 1988’s WrestleMania IV at Trump Plaza was an easy, flashy way to get not-quite-high rollers to bring their wives and kids to Atlantic City, New Jersey, for the weekend&nbsp;and drop cash at the casino. The event returned to Trump Plaza in 1989.</p>
<p>What kept Trump coming back—<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTLGkQeUjTs">being interviewed by wrestler-turned-politician Jesse Ventura</a> at WrestleMania in 2004, participating in a “Battle of the Billionaires” against McMahon in 2007, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qB7Ta6fdow">“buying” the WWE’s <em>Monday Night Raw</em></a> in 2009? It’s arguably his relationship with Vince McMahon, to whom he’s led an uncannily similar life. Both were born to successful regional businessmen who made millions in their fields: Fred Trump built properties in the outer boroughs of New York while Vince McMahon Sr. promoted wrestling in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. </p>
<p>When Donald and Vince Jr. took over their family businesses, they moved beyond their parochial origins (Trump set his sights on Manhattan, while Vince Jr. outmaneuvered competitors across the country) to turn their companies into national powerhouses and make their brands iconic: Donald Trump became a symbol of ’80s wealth, while McMahon’s greatest creation, Hulk Hogan, became a symbol of Reagan-era pop culture.</p>
<p>The ’90s weren’t kind to either Trump or McMahon. The former had a very public divorce and saw his casino business collapse, while the latter survived a federal steroid trial only to be nearly put out of business by Ted Turner’s WCW promotion. But despite the dips in their respective fortunes, both Trump and McMahon would be on top—and on the Forbes list—by the end of the decade. In the new millennium, they had matched or exceeded their ’80s business successes, and even shared a catchphrase: Trump issued a terse “you’re fired” to contestants on <em>The Apprentice </em>while an in-character McMahon growled “you’re fired” at his wrestlers.</p>
<p>The similarities don’t end there—they both worked with Mike Tyson (in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5abDK1j5IE">wrestling ring</a> and the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1988-02-25/sports/sp-45056_1_las-vegas">boxing ring</a>, respectively) and tried to compete with the NFL—and it’s clear that Donald Trump and Vince McMahon have worldviews and business approaches shaped by similar experiences. They understand how pro wrestling and its carny traditions can make money off of “marks,” the unsuspecting fans who don’t know (or don’t care) that it’s a con. And more than money, they’ve paradoxically used a staple of low culture—pro wrestling—to find mainstream credibility.</p>
<p>Since going public in 1999, the WWE has become increasingly family (and shareholder-) friendly. After decades in which wrestlers died early deaths due to steroids and drugs, the WWE instituted a stringent wellness policy. They’ve become the picture of a charitable corporate actor, sponsoring an anti-bullying initiative and working with Susan G. Komen, Make-A-Wish, and the Ad Council on a variety of campaigns. WWE programs constantly trumpet how well they’re doing in the ratings and on social media metrics compared to “real” sports, while describing their product as “sports entertainment,” not low-budget, low-culture “pro wrestling.”</p>
<p>Similarly, there’s the theory that the seed of Donald Trump’s decision to finally (actually) run for president in 2016 was planted at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where Trump was roasted by President Obama. “That evening of public abasement, rather than sending Mr. Trump away, accelerated his ferocious efforts to gain stature within the political world,” wrote Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/us/politics/donald-trump-campaign.html?_r=0"><em>New York Times</em></a>, noting his “deep yearning ... to be taken seriously.” With just over a month until his inauguration, people laughing at Donald Trump are coming to grips with the fact that he’s going to have the most powerful job in the world. Just as McMahon sought legitimacy by re-casting his fake sport as a global entertainment brand, Trump entered presidential politics to prove that he had to be taken seriously as a public figure.</p>
<p>Coincidentally, Trump’s ascendance will finally give the McMahons the political legitimacy they have not been able to obtain on their own: Linda McMahon unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in Connecticut in 2010 and 2012, spending nearly $100 million of her own money. In both elections, she stressed her credentials as a job creator and political outsider willing to spend her own money and reject political action committee donations, an approach with which Trump would find much more success. </p>
<p>It’s worth noting that McMahon ran away from pro wrestling in her campaign: she hand-waved the hyperviolent, oversexed product WWE had pushed in the late 1990s and early 2000s as “scripted television entertainment” and called on WWE fans to “correct biased and inaccurate media reports.”Meanwhile, Trump spent the entire campaign in full-on heel mode.</p>
<p>Now it turns out that Linda McMahon didn’t need to spend $100 million to gain some power: She and Vince may have just needed to give $5 million to the Trump Foundation (and another $6 million to a super PAC supporting Trump’s run): $4 million in 2007, the year of the Battle of the Billionaires, and $1 million in 2009, when Trump—in storyline—bought and sold WWE’s <em>Monday Night Raw</em>. In the end, Trump and the McMahons did what wrestling promoters have done for a century: counted the money in the back while the marks in the audience watched the spectacle in the ring.</p>Fri, 09 Dec 2016 23:15:38 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/12/donald_trump_learned_his_political_moves_from_wwe.htmlChris KellyBrandon Wetherbee2016-12-09T23:15:38ZNo wonder Trump wants a WWE magnate in his administration. He and pro wrestling go way back.SportsNo Wonder Trump Just Picked a Wrestling Magnate: He Learned His Political Moves From WWE100161209024wrestlingdonald trumpChris KellyBrandon WetherbeeSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/12/donald_trump_learned_his_political_moves_from_wwe.htmlfalsefalsefalseDonald Trump learned his political moves from WWE:The parallels between Trump’s political style and professional wrestling are scary.Bill Pugliano/Getty ImagesFrom center, Vince McMahon has his head shaved by Donald Trump and Bobby Lashley in April 2007 after losing a bet at the Battle of the Billionaires.Bad Coach, Bad for Americahttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/goodbye_and_good_riddance_j_rgen_klinsmann.html
<p>In isolation, the U.S. national team’s two recent losses in World Cup qualifying would be a harsh justification for axing a manager. The 2-1 defeat to Mexico in Columbus, Ohio, broke a streak of four consecutive 2-0 wins over El Tri in home qualifiers, but Mexico is too good a squad for the U.S. to go <a href="http://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2016/11/07/usa-vs-mexico-nine-games-made-dos-cero-legend">Dos a Cero</a> ad infinitum. And sure, the Americans’ 4-0 loss in San Jose, Costa Rica was embarrassing, but the U.S. has never won a World Cup qualifier on the road in Costa Rica.</p>
<p>But as has been the case throughout J&uuml;rgen Klinsmann’s five-year tenure, it’s the details of those losses that betrayed him, and it’s those details that made <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/sports/soccer/jurgen-klinsmann-fired-us-soccer-coach.html">his firing on Monday</a> overdue. In Columbus and in Costa Rica, the United States was outcoached and seemed underprepared, but that’s hardly new under Klinsmann. The team has suffered disappointing losses only to bounce back. What seems to have changed here is that U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati and the federation he leads could no longer ignore the evidence that Klinsmann’s players, like American fans, had lost faith in the man who was supposed to bring U.S. soccer to glory.</p>
<p>Klinsmann’s demise began when the U.S. gave Mexico a 25-minute head start in the Columbus qualifier, lining up in what the coach <a href="http://www.foxsports.com/soccer/story/jurgen-klinsmann-controversial-usmnt-formation-designed-for-christian-pulisic-112016">has called both a 3-4-3 and 3-4-1-2 formation</a>. Either way, the U.S. had barely practiced this new system and hadn’t deployed it in a game all year. Tactical masterminds spring surprise formations to target weaknesses in the opposition. In this case, Klinsmann put his own players in position to lose. The team looked totally out of its depth until it shifted into a more typical 4-4-2.</p>
<p>The players at Klinsmann’s last two coaching stops, the German national team and Bayern Munich, have never had anything nice to say about his acumen for X’s and O’s. With the U.S. national team, he combined those poor tactics with a lack of emotional intelligence. After the Mexico game, <a href="http://www.si.com/planet-futbol/2016/11/14/jurgen-klinsmann-usa-costa-rica-mexico-brooks-bradley-jones-world-cup-qualifying">Klinsmann blamed defender John Brooks</a> for losing Rafa Marquez on a late-game corner, allowing the Mexican captain to head home the winner. Brooks responded to the criticism by playing his worst game in a U.S. jersey in Costa Rica, misjudging headers, taking poor touches directly into the paths of opposition attackers, and getting <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutmeg_(football)">nutmegged</a> on multiple occasions.</p>
<p>Brooks was hardly the only player to trip over himself in San Jose. The team faltered so badly that Klinsmann himself felt compelled to address the notion that some of his men had stopped trying altogether. “There was nobody giving up at that time,” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/sports/jurgen-klinsmann-national-team.html">he told the <em>New York Times</em> this weekend</a>. “That was a normal emotional situation when things go wrong.” The best argument in Klinsmann’s favor was that it was difficult to tell whether the team’s listlessness was due to lack of effort or plain old terribleness.</p>
<p>These emotional situations were supposed to be Klinsmann’s strength. He was the motivator, the communicator, someone who understood players because he had been a great one himself. This could have been a justification for keeping him: He may not be a good coach, but he was an asset as a general manager and technical director. He may not have identified talents like Brooks and Fabian Johnson, but he did convince them to sign their international careers over to the U.S. It’s safe to say that his likely replacement, Bruce Arena, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/sports/jurgen-klinsmann-national-team.html?_r=0">wouldn’t have tried as hard to expand the pool in this way</a>.</p>
<p>But here too Klinsmann fell short of the standards he’d set for himself. Promises to further integrate Hispanic talent into the pool have manifested in a lot of games for Michael Orozco and not much else. Meanwhile, there were plenty of Americans—<a href="http://twitter.com/b_feilhaber22/status/800794412158742528">Benny Feilhaber</a>, Dax McCarty, and the finally recalled Sacha Kljestan among them—who felt unjustly overlooked by a man who cast a wide but shallow net for talent, then patched the holes by shuffling around the players he had called in. If Julian Green scores a goal that gets the U.S. into the semifinals in Qatar, we can all raise a glass to J&uuml;rgen Klinsmann, but for now I’d rather pour one out for the years of Michael Bradley’s prime that were wasted with the captain playing out of position as an advanced playmaker. </p>
<p>Arena’s hands are thought to be the safest available on short notice. He’d be a less exciting coach than one of the bright young MLS minds like<strong> </strong>&Oacute;scar<strong> </strong>Pareja or Jesse Marsch, or than soccer’s Nikola Tesla, Argentine <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcelo_Bielsa">Marcelo Bielsa</a>. But he is familiar with the player pool, and he knows where the light switches are. Arena is something of a tinkerer—he even made a surprise switch to a three-defender formation work against Mexico at the World Cup in 2002—so who knows what the U.S. team might look like if he leads it onto the field for its next World Cup qualifier, against Honduras in March. We can hope it would look cohesive, which would be a big upgrade over the past five years. </p>Mon, 21 Nov 2016 23:55:38 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/goodbye_and_good_riddance_j_rgen_klinsmann.htmlEric Betts2016-11-21T23:55:38ZGoodbye and good riddance, J&uuml;rgen Klinsmann.SportsJ&uuml;rgen Klinsmann: Bad Tactician, Bad Motivator. His Firing: Good for America.100161121021soccerEric BettsSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/goodbye_and_good_riddance_j_rgen_klinsmann.htmlfalsefalsefalseJürgen Klinsmann: bad tactician, bad motivator. His firing: good for America:Goodbye and good riddance.Jamie Sabau/Getty ImagesNow-former head coach J&uuml;rgen Klinsmann of the United States looks on against Mexico during the FIFA 2018 World Cup Qualifier on Nov. 11, 2016, in Columbus, Ohio.No More Sticking to Sportshttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/what_athletes_and_coaches_said_after_donald_trump_s_win.html
<p>Last week, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/02/29/the_lesson_of_donald_trump_s_failed_sketchy_mortgage_business.html">failed businessman</a> and <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/06/trump_s_attack_on_a_federal_judge_is_an_open_appeal_to_racism.html">blatant racist</a> Donald Trump became the president-elect of the United States. In the aftermath of Trump’s shocking win, a number of pro athletes and coaches spoke out against the man who <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/07/donald_trump_brags_about_committing_criminal_sexual_assault.html">bragged about sexually assaulting women</a>, while a few hardcore supporters tweeted out the “Make America Great Again” slogan. Others sent out messages pleading for “unity” and “fairness,” two things Trump himself has actively opposed. Many more, including Tom Brady, declined to say anything at all.</p>
<p>Below, we’ve collected the most notable athlete and coach responses to Trump’s win. <a href="mailto:laura.wagner@slate.com">Email me</a> with any notable omissions, and we’ll update our list.</p>
<p><em>This list has been updated from its original version to include more coaches and athletes who have since spoken about the election.</em></p>
<h3><strong>Anti-Trump coaches</strong></h3>
<p><a href="http://www.freep.com/story/sports/nba/pistons/2016/11/09/detroit-pistons-stan-van-gundy/93551178/"><strong>The Detroit Pistons’ Stan Van Gundy</strong></a><strong>:</strong></p>
<blockquote>
I didn’t vote for [George W.] Bush, but he was a good, honorable man with whom I had political differences, so I didn’t vote for him. But&nbsp;for our country to be where we are now, who took a guy who—I don’t care what anyone says, I’m sure they have other reasons and maybe good reasons for voting for Donald Trump—but I don’t think anybody can deny this guy is openly and brazenly racist and misogynistic and ethnic-centric, and say,&nbsp;“That’s OK with us, we’re going to vote for him anyway.”
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
We have just thrown a good part of our population under the bus, and I have problems with thinking that this is where we are as a country. …
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
We just elected an openly, brazen&nbsp;misogynist leader and we should keep our mouths shut and realize that we need to be learning maybe from the rest of the world, because we don’t got anything to teach anybody.
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/spurs/article/Gregg-Popovich-uncensored-Discusses-the-10609311.php"><strong>The San Antonio Spurs’ Gregg Popovich:</strong></a></p>
<blockquote>
One could go on and on, we didn't make this stuff up. He’s angry at the media because they reported what he said and how he acted. That’s ironic to me. It makes no sense. So that’s my real fear, and that’s what gives me so much pause and makes me feel so badly that the country is willing to be that intolerant and not understand the empathy that's necessary to understand other group's situations.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
I’m a rich white guy, and I’m sick to my stomach thinking about it. I can’t imagine being a Muslim right now, or a woman, or an African American, a Hispanic, a handicapped person. How disenfranchised they might feel. And for anyone in those groups that voted for him, it’s just beyond my comprehension how they ignore all of that. My final conclusion is, my big fear is, we are Rome.
</blockquote>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/09/steve-kerr-rants-about-election-process-this-is-a-presidential-election-not-the-jerry-springer-show/">The Golden State Warriors’ Steve Kerr:</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
Maybe we should’ve seen it coming over the last 10 years. You look at society, you look at what’s popular. People are getting paid millions of dollars to go on TV and scream at each other, whether it’s in sports or politics or entertainment, and I guess it was only a matter of time before it spilled into politics.&nbsp;But then all of a sudden you’re faced with the reality that the man who’s gonna lead you has routinely used racist, misogynist, insulting words. … I wish him well. I hope he’s a good president. I have no idea what kind of president he’ll be because he hasn’t said anything about what he’s going to do. We don’t know. But it’s tough when you want there to be some respect and dignity, and there hasn’t been any. And then you walk into a room with your daughter and your wife who have basically been insulted by his comments and they’re distraught. Then you walk in and see the faces of your players, most of them who have been insulted directly as minorities, it’s very shocking. It really is.
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.hookem.com/2016/11/11/shaka-smart-donald-trump-victory-slap-face/">University of Texas basketball coach Shaka Smart:</a><br /> </p>
<blockquote>
When someone who is elected who has a history of being hateful, of being racist, of being sexist, of saying certain things that are derogatory toward a certain group, it feels like a slap in the face. ... After that election, we’ve got some guys who were really, really hurt because to them, it was a message of, &quot;Hey, you’re not as significant and as important as other people in this country.&quot;... I think somebody said it, &quot;You can move somewhere else.&quot; We're not going to do that. We're Americans, we live in America, we love America. But America's got some issues. And listen, again, this is not surprising based on the history of America. These issues didn't just crop up. There is a legacy of what happened over time here that is continuing to play out and it's our job to try to move forward.
</blockquote>
<h3><strong>Anti-Trump athletes</strong></h3>
<p><strong><a href="http://deadspin.com/mike-evans-sat-during-national-anthem-to-protest-electi-1788947104">Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans:</a></strong></p>
<p>Evans sat during the national anthem before Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears to protest Trump’s win. He spoke to reporters about it after the game:</p>
<blockquote>
I’m not big on politics or things like that, but I told myself, I said, if [Trump gets elected], then America is not right right now. I said this a long time ago. When he ran, I thought it was a joke, and you know, the joke continues. … A reality star can be the president, that’s not a good look for America, I think. Because of who he is. It’s not about the Republican Party or Democratic Party or anything like that. It’s just who he is, and it’s well-documented what he’s done, and I’m not gonna stand for somebody I don’t believe in.
</blockquote>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/lebron-james-why-endorsing-hillary-clinton-for-president-2016-9">Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James:</a></strong></p>
<p>On Nov. 11, <a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18023858/lebron-james-cleveland-cavaliers-donald-trump-victory-guy">James made additional comments in Washington, D.C.</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
I mean, he's our president. And no matter if you agree with it or disagree with it, he's the guy, and we all have to figure out a way that we can make America as great as it can be. We all have to do our part. Our nation has never been built on one guy, anyway. It's been built on multiple guys, multiple people in power, multiple people having a dream and making it become a reality by giving back to the community, giving back to the youth, doing so many great things.
</blockquote>
<p>When asked if he would go to the White House to meet with Trump if the Cavaliers win another championship, James said:</p>
<blockquote>
We'll have to cross that road, I guess. We'll see. I would love to have to cross that road.
</blockquote>
<p>U.S. women’s national team midfielder Megan Rapinoe:<strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Los Angeles Clippers&nbsp;guard Jamal Crawford:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Cleveland Cavaliers guard J.R. Smith:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Minnesota Timberwolves guard Ricky Rubio:</strong></p>
<p><strong>FC Bayern Munich midfielder Javi Martinez:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Toronto Raptors forward Patrick Patterson:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/news/uswnt-rapinoe-morgan-ellis-react-donald-trump-presidential-election"><strong>U.S. women’s national team forward Alex Morgan:</strong></a><strong></strong></p>
<blockquote>
I know that so many of my friends and family and people that I look up to [were] in support of Hillary. But at the same time, we have to accept what most of the nation has voted for, and that’s to elect Donald Trump. … I’m trying to go into [Trump’s presidency] with an open mind, but at the same time, I was very optimistic that we were going to have our first female president of this country.
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Former NFL linebacker Takeo Spikes:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Washington Wizards forward Kelly Oubre Jr.:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Chicago Bulls guard Dwyane Wade:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Oklahoma City Thunder center Enes Kanter:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sacramento Kings center DeMarcus Cousins:</strong></p>
<p><strong>New York Knicks center Joakim Noah:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.csnbayarea.com/warriors/david-west-donald-trump-speaks-majority-americans"><strong>Golden State Warriors forward David West:</strong></a><strong></strong></p>
<blockquote>
The message was loud and clear last night. I don’t think there’s any room to not face the obvious truth: that he speaks for the majority of the people in this nation. His attitudes about black people and Muslim people, about women, about just about whatever group you can name, folks agreed with his position. And you can’t deny that because folks voted for him. So this whole fairy-tale about some post-racial, post … this Utopia that Obama supposedly created, it’s all bull. That’s the bottom line. When you look at what the results say from last night, this nation has not moved a thread with its ideals. The things that he said, the things that he represented … that’s the way the majority of this nation feels. He just emboldened them because he was able to say it publicly. It is kind of unnerving and unsettling to think about some of the things that he has said and hasn’t apologized for.
</blockquote>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/09/broncos-reactions-presidential-election-donald-trump/">Denver Broncos linebacker Shane Ray:</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
My decision came down to who I felt was a better person for the country. I’m not a Trump supporter. I voted for Hillary. But with Donald Trump coming into presidency, people have to understand what they voted for. I think the negative messages he was sending, that’s not something I would want to endorse and vote for. But it is what it is. We have four years with him, so if you voted for him, I don’t want to hear any complaints. We all got to live with the decisions we made. I’m not a Trump guy, but he’s my President right now.
</blockquote>
<h3><strong>Trump-supporting New England Patriots who aren’t willing to say they’re supporting Trump</strong></h3>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/08/bill_belichick_supports_donald_trump.html">Patriots coach Bill Belichick:</a></strong></p>
<p>Belichick wrote a letter to Trump that <a href="http://www.si.com/nfl/2016/11/09/patriots-bill-belichick-donald-trump-letter-explanation">read</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
Congratulations on a tremendous campaign. You have dealt with an unbelievable slanted and negative media, and have come out beautifully—beautifully. You’ve proved to be the ultimate competitor and fighter. Your leadership is amazing. I have always had tremendous respect for you, but the toughness and perseverance you have displayed over the past year is remarkable. Hopefully tomorrow’s election results will give the opportunity to make America great again. Best wishes for great results tomorrow.
</blockquote>
<p>On Wednesday Nov. 9, Belichick <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/11/09/bill-belichick-says-that-donald-trump-letter-was-about-friendship-not-politics/">admitted</a> he wrote a letter to Trump out of “friendship.”</p>
<blockquote>
I’ve received a number of inquiries relative to a note that I wrote to Donald on Monday. Our friendship goes back many years and I think anybody that’s spent more than five minutes with me knows I’m not a political person. The comments are not politically motivated, I have a friendship and loyalty to Donald. … [A] couple of weeks ago, we had Secretary of State [John] Kerry in our locker room. That’s another friend of mine. I can’t imagine two people with more different political views than those two, but to me friendship and loyalty is just about that. It’s not about political or religious views. … I write hundreds of letters and notes every month. [It] doesn’t mean I agree with every single thing that every person thinks about politics, religion, or other subjects. I have multiple friendships that are important to me. That’s what that was about. … It’s not about politics, it’s about football. We’ve got a huge game this week against a great football team and a great organization.
</blockquote>
<p><strong><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/make-america-great-hat-tom-bradys-locker/story?id=33606937">Patriots quarterback Tom Brady:</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
I talked to my wife, she said I can't talk about politics anymore. I think that's a good decision&nbsp;made for our family.
</blockquote>
<h3><strong>Pro-Trump athletes</strong></h3>
<p><strong><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/10/05/bills-richie-incognito-relates-to-donald-trump-because-of-his-toughness/">Buffalo Bills offensive lineman Richie Incognito:</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Kansas City Royals pitcher Dillon Gee:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Golfer Natalie Gulbis:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Golfer John Daly:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Chicago Cubs pitcher&nbsp;Jake Arrieta:</strong></p>
<p><strong>U.S. men’s national team defender Geoff Cameron:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Atlanta Hawks forward Kris Humphries:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Charlotte Hornets forward&nbsp;Spencer Hawes:</strong></p>
<h3><strong>Not a fan of either candidate</strong></h3>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/49ers/2016/11/14/colin-kaepernick-voting-would-have-been-hypocritical/93786182/">San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick:</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
You know, I think it would be hypocritical of me to vote. I said from the beginning I was against oppression, I was against the system of oppression. I’m not going to show support for that system. And to me, the oppressor isn’t going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression.
</blockquote>
<p><strong><a href="http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/11/07/nfl-players-discuss-2016-election">Detroit Lions tight end Eric Ebron:</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
It’s just not what I’m interested in. I don’t want to have any say, if it goes good or bad. I feel like maybe those of us who didn’t vote will have less blame if it works out terribly. We’ll have an out.
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Charlotte Hornets center&nbsp;Frank Kaminsky:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Denver Nuggets forward&nbsp;Wilson Chandler:</strong></p>
<h3><strong>Calls for unity</strong></h3>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.espn.com/blog/green-bay-packers/post/_/id/34940/aaron-rodgers-hopes-as-a-country-we-can-now-come-together-after-election">Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers:</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
You have an outsider winning or the first woman to be president. So I thought it was an important night to our country and really a message to the establishment, if you’re looking at it from an objective point of view. … I hope as a country we can now come together and work a little better with each other. Obviously, there were some people who were—rightfully so—worried about the direction of the country now, but I think it’s an important time for us that we come together and figure out how to work with each other.
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Los Angeles Angels pitcher Huston Street:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Former MLB player Willie Bloomquist:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Sacramento Kings guard Garrett Temple:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Portland Trail Blazers guard Evan Turner:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Former New Orleans Saints wide receiver Lance Moore:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Former MLB player Vernon Wells:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Former NFL player Justin Tuck:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Toronto Raptors center Jared Sullinger:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18031369/damian-lillard-questions-violent-protests-portland-oregon-following-donald-trump-election"><strong>Portland Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard:</strong></a></p>
<blockquote>
I think it's very unfortunate that people have done some of the things they have done during the protest. A lot of harm and damage has been done. I do understand their frustration, and I commend people wanting to come together for some kind of change. Tearing apart your own city just isn't the place to begin, and also making your own city less of a safe place isn't the answer.
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Atlanta Hawks guard&nbsp;Malcolm Delaney:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Portland Trail Blazers shooting guard C.J. McCollum:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Seattle Sounders FC forward Herculez Gomez:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Cleveland Cavaliers guard Iman Shumpert:</strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/soccer/national/2016/11/09/united-state-mexico-michael-bradley-donald-trump-world-cup/93546348/">U.S. men’s national soccer team captain Michael Bradley:</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
My general feeling is that we as Americans, we trust our system, we respect our democracy. Regardless of your beliefs, regardless of how you voted, we have an obligation to come together and get behind our new president and to have faith and trust that he will do what’s best for the entire country. … In moments like this it is easy to question things. But this is what makes our country great, that we have a system where every American can go and vote. The results may not be what every person wanted. Some are happy, others aren’t, but the way forward is to come together, give our president support, rally behind him. He will continue what I believe every president has done—make decisions for the good of the country.
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/amp/amp.usatoday.com/story/93719888/">Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino:</a></p>
<blockquote>
He belongs to the same club in New York as I do, and a lot of people think he’s a good guy. He had to try to win an election, I wouldn’t want to win in that way, but he had to try to do it, I guess. But the most important thing now is whoever he insulted, call them up and apologize. And then start fresh with everybody. … And he’s not a politician, so he’s gonna make these mistakes. He should be part of the Louisville basketball team and lose his Twitter account.
<br /> &nbsp;
<br /> He should join our team and lose that Twitter account. And then he just needs to call those people up. Start fresh, apologize to anybody he insulted from the Mexican community, say it wasn’t meant. People, when you apologize and you really mean it, they forgive you. But if you don’t apologize, they don’t forget.
</blockquote>Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:15:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/what_athletes_and_coaches_said_after_donald_trump_s_win.htmlLaura Wagner2016-11-15T14:15:00ZWhat athletes and coaches said after Donald Trump’s victory.SportsAll of the Athletes and Coaches Who Didn’t Stick to Sports After Donald Trump’s Win1001611150042016 campaigndonald trumpLaura WagnerSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/what_athletes_and_coaches_said_after_donald_trump_s_win.htmlfalsefalsefalseAfter Trump’s win, “sticking to sports” died:Gregg Popovich, LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, and more.Thearon W. Henderson/Getty ImagesSan Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich during a game against the Sacramento Kings on Oct. 27 in Sacramento, California.The Brangelina of the NBAhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/russell_westbrook_and_kevin_durant_are_the_brangelina_of_the_nba.html
<p>Last Thursday night, Oklahoma City point guard Russell Westbrook—<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/05/10/russell_westbrook_is_turning_the_nba_playoffs_into_a_personal_runway_show.html">the most sartorially remarkable NBA player</a> since Walt “Clyde” Frazier—walked into Oakland’s Oracle Arena wearing an orange vest emblazoned with the words “official photographer.” It was a strange choice of attire, one that ESPN’s longtime Thunder chronicler Royce Young speculated to be a sly dig against Westbrook’s former teammate Kevin Durant.</p>
<p>The on-court result—Golden State won in a walk—seemed almost a dull formality next to the pregame intrigue as the top headline on <em>ESPN.com</em> read “<a href="http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/17967268/kevin-durant-russell-westbrook-avoid-other-tipoff-oklahoma-city-thunder-golden-state-warriors-game">Durant, Westbrook avoid each other before tipoff</a>.”</p>
<p>Durant’s move from Oklahoma City to Golden State, and the resulting breakup of the eight-season Durant–Westbrook partnership, will be at minimum a dominant subplot of the 2016–17 NBA season. Thus far, it’s felt more like the main story, and it’s been an awfully rich one. Throughout the summer and early fall, Westbrook and Durant have behaved like the long-term couple that’s just emerged from a breakup, with each trying a bit too ostentatiously to let the world know he’s “moved on.” Durant and Westbrook have long been the NBA’s Brangelina, leaving hoops junkies to wonder what lay beneath their strange and fascinating cohabitation. Now it’s over, and like with any great tabloid divorce, we’re now left to read the tea leaves of their every movement and utterance.</p>
<p>The once notoriously media-averse duo have both recently (and separately) graced the covers and pages of prestigious publications, insisting they were never all that close in the first place: “We had our own cliques that we hung with on the road. Russell had his guys, I had mine,” <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/features/kevin-durant-had-to-blow-up-his-life-to-get-his-shot-w445344">Durant told <em>Rolling Stone</em></a><em>. </em>There have been healthy doses of he-said, he-said: In the same <em>RS </em>cover story Durant claimed that he and Westbrook didn’t communicate during his decision process, whereas the Thunder’s Nick Collison <a href="http://www.si.com/nba/2016/10/19/russell-westbrook-thunder-nba-season-preview-kevin-durant">told <em>Sports Illustrated</em>’s Lee Jenkins</a><em> </em>that Westbrook had gone “above and beyond” in a private Thunder pitch meeting at a Los Angeles steakhouse. Sometimes the sniping has been deliciously oblique: Jenkins’ Westbrook profile intimated that an Instagram photo of cupcakes posted by Westbrook on July 4—the day of Durant’s decision—was in fact a shot at his ex-teammate, “cupcake” being OKC locker-room slang for a soft player.</p>
<p>Passive-aggressive has sometimes given way to aggressive-aggressive. Responding to a pointed quote from Durant about the “family” dynamic in Golden State (“You hear family a lot. That’s just a word sometimes, but this is really a lifestyle here”), <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/10/russell-westbrook-kevin-durant-oklahoma-city-thunder-golden-city-warriors-selfish-feud-video">Westbrook snapped</a>, “That’s cute. My job is to worry&nbsp;about what’s going on here, we’re going to worry about&nbsp;about all the selfish guys we’ve got over here, apparently.”</p>
<p>All tawdry rubbernecking aside, the Durant–Westbrook rivalry presents a fascinating microcosm of so many great basketball schisms and debates. Durant was always anointed, picked second in the 2007 draft behind Greg Oden, a decision that 99 percent of hipster NBA fans will now tell you they knew was wrong at the time. Westbrook was picked fourth the following year, one spot ahead of his more-celebrated UCLA teammate Kevin Love, in a move that was widely seen as a curious reach on the part of Thunder general manager Sam Presti. (No one who played at UCLA and was drafted in the high lottery seems has done a more impressive job than Russell Westbrook at internalizing the notion that he is an underdog.) Personality-wise, Durant presents a steady, almost Sphinx-like demeanor on the court, while Westbrook is all heart on sleeve, possessor of one of the league’s most expressive faces. Nothing about Durant is volatile; nothing about Westbrook is anything else.</p>
<p>Durant is pure hoops, a spindly and graceful player who glides around the court stroking his gorgeous jumper as though there is nowhere else on earth he ought to be. I would pay to watch Kevin Durant shoot baskets in an empty gymnasium. Westbrook is a sensational athlete whose ungodly strength and leaping ability allow him to play anywhere from four to six inches taller than he actually is. (Westbrook, 6-foot-3, last year averaged as many rebounds per game as Brooklyn 7-footer Brook Lopez.) His jump shot is a perpetual work-in-progress, a haphazard afterthought to his kamikaze, barrel-into-the-lane style. Kevin Durant makes basketball look easy. Russell Westbrook makes it look impossibly difficult for himself and everyone in his way.<strong></strong></p>
<p>The rivalry breaks down along one of the fundamental dichotomies of sports, grace versus force, but also along the lines of competing theories of basketball. Durant’s move to the Warriors seemed craven to some, but it was the ultimate validation of basketball as a team game. More than any other NBA team, the Warriors—a squad defined by fluid and relentless movement and deft and selfless passing—exemplify a whole-greater-than-sum-of-the-parts ideal. This has never been Westbrook’s style of play. As I wrote last May, Westbrook is an <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/05/russell_westbrook_is_the_most_volatile_great_player_in_nba_history.html">unreconstructed devotee of the style known as “hero ball,”</a> the fervid conviction that one great player, with the appropriate excesses of talent and will, can drag his team to victory.</p>
<p>One of the great contradictions of NBA fandom is that we want to believe that team ball is more worthy than hero ball, but we’re thrilled when the latter wins out. The NBA, after all, is an exceptionally personality-driven world. Its players are more exposed, physically and otherwise, than the stars of any other sports league, and a single great player really <em>can </em>alter the axis of the sport entirely. Look no further than last June, when the Warriors won 73 games and lost in one of the most memorable NBA Finals of all time to a lesser team that just happened to have the world’s best player, a guy who did incomprehensible things in the face of a squad that wasn’t supposed to lose, penning one of sports’ all-time great personal redemption stories in the process.</p>
<p>Thus far the Durant and Westbrook separation has been great for gossip, great for narrative, and mostly great for basketball, at least on an individual level. On Thursday night, Durant put up a scorching 39 points in 31 minutes in a performance that felt distinctly wrathful, and he’s currently averaging 30 points per game, dispelling the notion that playing alongside Steph Curry and Klay Thompson would cause his numbers to dip. For his part, Westbrook opened the season as <a href="http://www.oddsshark.com/nba/nba-mvp-201617-betting-odds">the favorite</a> to win the NBA’s MVP trophy, and if he keeps doing what he’s doing—he is averaging close to a triple-double, and the 5–1 Thunder are thus far exceeding expectations—he most likely will. After an offseason of gossipy innuendo and glossy-page backbiting, we’re finally being reminded of why we care so much about these guys in the first place, and damned if it doesn’t make those cupcakes all the more delicious.</p>Mon, 07 Nov 2016 18:54:15 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/russell_westbrook_and_kevin_durant_are_the_brangelina_of_the_nba.htmlJack Hamilton2016-11-07T18:54:15ZParsing the divorce of Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant.SportsRussell Westbrook and Kevin Durant Are the Brangelina of the NBA100161107013sportsnbabasketballJack HamiltonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/russell_westbrook_and_kevin_durant_are_the_brangelina_of_the_nba.htmlfalsefalsefalseRussell Westbrook and Kevin Durant are the Brangelina of the NBA:They’ve behaved like the long-term couple that’s just emerged from a breakup, with each trying a bit too ostentatiously to let the world know he’s “moved on.”USA Today Sports/ReutersOklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook shoots a technical foul shot as Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant looks on during Thursday’s game.“When They Won, I Cried Because of Her”http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/at_a_makeshift_memorial_chicago_cubs_fans_remember_their_loved_ones.html
<p><em>During the World Series, Chicago Cubs fans began writing messages on Wrigley Field’s brick walls and the surrounding sidewalks with chalk. Some of these are vanity graffiti, with fans writing their own names. Others are boasts. (“We Did Not Suck.”) Many are tributes to loved ones who spent their lives rooting for the Cubs but died without seeing them win a championship. Game 7 wasn’t just a victory for a baseball team. It marked the end of generations of longing, passed down to children by parents who, in many cases, weren’t around to experience the fulfillment of their hopes. Here are the stories of Wrigley Field’s wall chalkers.</em></p>
<p><strong>Aesha Williams, 37</strong></p>
<p>It’s for my partner Gary’s mother. She was born in the suburbs—I think it was Homewood—and she moved into Chicago, and she was one of those Chicagoans who never had a car, and would bring her kids out here when she had the opportunity, and it was just something that bonded their family. Gary mostly talked about the day games and sitting in the upper deck. He has really fond memories of just coming down and picking up tickets the day of, and the ivy, the smells, and hanging out with his mom. We didn’t go to the World Series. I would have taken money out of my retirement fund if I’d won the drawing. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.</p>
<p><strong>Allie Serd, 28</strong></p>
<p>My Grandma Grace passed away five years ago, and she was a huge Cubs fan. When she passed away, she wanted to pass away with her Cubs blanket on her. My brother wrote a letter at her funeral: “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see the Cubs win the World Series,” and we all cried. Growing up in Danville, we would watch all the games with her. When they won, I cried because of her. It was her No. 1 thing. She’s smiling down in heaven; you know she’s happy. It would mean so much to her. I can imagine her in her recliner, being “Oh, my God, they’re tied.” I moved here three years ago, and I went to my first Cubs game last year, and I thought of her. I don’t think she ever saw a game at Wrigley Field. She wasn’t a traveler.</p>
<p><strong>Marco Mar, 54</strong></p>
<p>I wrote E-Mar, for my father, Eustorgio Mar, who died last month. He played all the sports, but baseball was his favorite. He coached baseball here in Chicago, in Humboldt Park. This past year, he had a lot of medical issues, so he wasn’t aware of how the Cubs were doing. As soon as they won, I kissed my hand and reached toward the sky, and said, “This is for you.” He always hoped. There was always that hope and that aggravation year after year, and his <em>m-f-ing</em> them all the time. He knew all the stats. Seeing them win is bittersweet. I feel great, but just a month short of his passing. Maybe it was God’s plan. What they put us through in this series, the way my heart was pounding, I don’t think his heart could have stood it.</p>
<p><strong>Gretchen Gscheidle, 46</strong></p>
<p>I still remember very vividly my very first game: July 6, 1979, here at Wrigley, and all the details associated with it. … I was in the 500 aisle for my seats with my dad and my grandfather and a co-worker of my dad’s, and I can remember the souvenirs I bought that day: a jersey, a helmet, a button of Bill Buckner, and it’s just been a love affair ever since. I’ve been a season ticket–holder here since ’96, many lean years. I’ve made it to all the playoff games here and the World Series here. Now that they’ve won, I don’t anticipate that I will get quite the sympathy from co-workers and fans that I normally do. In fact, they were checking my wrists a couple weeks ago after the early loss to the Giants, and I said, “I have my faith.” They see that now. You found me up on the ladder, but my feet haven’t touched the ground in 24 hours.</p>
<p><strong>Calvin Parks, 57 </strong></p>
<p>Pig Latin is old school. It’s in honor of something that when I was a kid, it was kind of a playful thing. My girlfriend Ann and I live four blocks from here. We’ve been living over here for almost 13 years. Every day during the summer is just a celebratory environment, and people are so nice, and it’s a neighborhood. Literally, if you were in our backyard you wouldn’t know that this is four blocks away, and all this energy’s here. We’ve just felt really blessed to be able to be part of the neighborhood. We’re home and we’re bored Tuesday night, and we’re like, “Let’s just walk over to the Cubs’ park.” Sometimes ... come three innings in, because we live so close. It’s a place where everybody comes, and we’re here all the time. For all the major wins, we were standing outside the park.</p>
<p><strong>Joan Vandenbosch, 56</strong></p>
<p>I grew up at Irving and Western. I was a 9-year-old in 1969. I watched my father lose his mind. That was my initiation into Cub-dom. In 2003, my son was 12 years old, and we were watching Game 6 [of the National League Championship Series]. I was a nervous wreck. My son said, “Mom, it’s the eighth inning, five outs to go. Mark Prior is on the mound. What could possibly go wrong?” That was my son’s initiation into Cub-dom. My mom is 90, so she was 17 during the 1945 World Series. My whole family was together for Game 7. My mom had the time of her life. Unfortunately, a very dear friend of ours passed away about a week ago. She was our angel in the outfield. Now we’re loud and proud. I don’t know what we are now. We’re not lovable losers anymore. I’d love to be the Yankees for a decade or so.</p>
<p><strong>Chris Troyke, 16 </strong></p>
<p>I wrote names of friends and family that couldn’t be here, that are not still with us. It’s a sport that we followed our whole lives and a goal that we thought was impossible. I’m so lucky to be able to experience this, and all the people who have waited longer than me, they so deserve this, and so do the Cubs.</p>
<p><strong>Pam Behrhorst, “too old to say how old I am,” with her friend Darcy Delf, 52</strong></p>
<p>We were in one of those rooftops for Game 5. We were extremely overcharged and they didn’t upscale anything. It was $1,300. We walked out here and people were cheering and slapping high fives and waving flags. Then we noticed that people had been writing on the wall, and we picked up a little piece of chalk and wrote our names. My grandparents were Cubs fans, so I became a Cubs fan. I grew up in South Bend and my grandparents always watched WGN with the antenna. The picture was snowy. I have a brick on Waveland with their names: Herman and Mary Smith. My grandpa was 92. It’s been more than 10 years since he died. He never saw the Cubs win the World Series. I have this pin on my hat that says, “If It Takes Forever.” I just realized this morning that forever is now.</p>
<p><strong>John Milner, 35</strong></p>
<p>My son Jack is 6 months old. His middle name is Dawson after Andre Dawson, my favorite Cubs player. We tried to stay up and watch all the games. I let him stay up past his bedtime. I fell asleep right before the 10<sup>th</sup> inning [on Wednesday] night. I woke up to seeing them celebrate, so I just missed all the excitement. He’s here for the first year, he’s named after one of my favorite Cubs of all time. He’s not going to remember. That’s why we’re here. We’re taking pictures, videos. My dad DVR-ed the game, so he’ll be able to watch it and say, “That’s the year I was born.” He’ll have a story to tell. My first child was born and the Cubs won the World Series in the same year. Does it get any better than that?</p>
<p><em><strong>Correction, Nov. 11, 2016: </strong>A photo from this gallery has been removed because the names of the people in the image could not be verified.</em></p>Fri, 04 Nov 2016 15:44:57 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/at_a_makeshift_memorial_chicago_cubs_fans_remember_their_loved_ones.htmlEdward McClelland2016-11-04T15:44:57ZAt a makeshift memorial, Chicago Cubs fans remember loved ones who never got to see their team win the World Series.SportsAt a Makeshift Memorial, Cubs Fans Remember Loved Ones Who Missed Out100161104009sportsbaseballworld seriesEdward McClellandSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/at_a_makeshift_memorial_chicago_cubs_fans_remember_their_loved_ones.htmlfalsefalsefalseAt a makeshift memorial, Cubs fans remember loved ones who missed out:Growing up in Danville, we would watch all the games with her. When they won, I cried because of her. It was her No. 1 thing.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesChicago Cubs fan Stacey Shroyer Piotrowski chalks a message on a sidewalk outside Wrigley Field on Thursday, the day after the Cubs win the 2016 World Series.I Sold Bill Murray a Beer at Wrigley Fieldhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/i_worked_as_a_wrigley_field_beer_vendor_during_the_world_series.html
<p>In the fall of 2003, I came to New York City to seek my fortune. I ended up sleeping during most days and drinking most nights at a series of cheap and disgusting bars on Avenue A in the East Village. When I wasn’t drunk or hibernating—and occasionally then, too—I was thinking about the Chicago Cubs.</p>
<p>My move to New York had been underwritten by money I’d saved from working as a Wrigley Field beer vendor, a job I’d taken so I could attend Cubs games for free. At age 22, watching baseball was one of my top priorities, which made me a pretty terrible vendor, since I’d spend more time looking at the game than searching for customers. After clocking out, I would rush to a small patio atop the right-field grandstand, where I’d join a few other young vendors in watching the last few innings out of view from our supervisors. I watched the Cubs clinch a playoff berth from that vantage. I jumped up and down in my uniform, screaming in delight, embracing strangers. The Cubs were making history—and I had been there to see it happen.</p>
<p>I watched every playoff game that I didn’t attend at one of those gross Avenue A bars. It was there, in my brand-new Kerry Wood jersey, that I watched Game 6 of that year’s NLCS—the “Bartman game.” I remember stumbling out of the bar, deeply depressed, and collapsing on a stoop on St. Mark’s Place, where I sat for what felt like an hour, staring at nothing, trying to process what had just happened. I had learned one of the cardinal lessons of Cubs fandom: Try not to care too much.</p>
<p>I moved soon after the playoffs—turns out New York is a pretty unlivable place for a guy with no money and no ambition—and I haven’t been back to those grimy East Village bars since. After 2003, I basically stopped caring about the Cubs. Sure, I wanted them to do well, but I stopped allowing myself to get invested in the fortunes of any given team. I kept working at Wrigley Field, but I started to focus more on selling beer than watching the games. I’m older now, and I can really use the money. The Cubs returned to the playoffs in 2007 and 2008. I barely remember those seasons. I don’t even remember if I was at any of those playoff games.</p>
<p>And then 2016 came around, and I felt 22 again. From start to finish, the Cubs were the best team in baseball, and the skill and joy with which they played the game warmed my cold, shriveled heart. I tried to resist. On June 19, I let my guard down for the first time in a decade. The Cubs were playing the Pirates on a warm, beautiful, clear night. I was selling Budweiser in the left-field grandstand and doing pretty well for a Sunday. Top prospect Willson Contreras had just been called up to the majors, and in the sixth inning he got called on to pinch-hit. As Contreras came to the plate for his first major-league at-bat, I swear to God that I had a premonition: <em>He’s going to hit a home run. </em>He crushed the first pitch he saw into the center-field bleachers. Standing atop section 201, I started crying.</p>
<p>From that point, I was all in on the 2016 Cubs. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that the 2016 baseball season had <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/how_cubs_fans_became_a_bunch_of_optimists.html">made Cubs fans into a bunch of optimists</a>. In that piece, I wrote about Cubs fans as a third party, a group I’d spent the year examining anthropologically from my vantage in the stands. I didn’t mention the extent to which I’d started to care again. I don’t think I even realized it. It became clear to me last week, when the World Series came to Wrigley Field for the first time in 71 years. I worked all three games. “I’d ask how you’re doing, but that’s sort of a stupid question,” I said to a customer before Game 3, as I poured him a $10.50 beer. “I mean, it’s the <em>World Series</em>. And the Cubs are in it!”</p>
<p>The Cubs hadn’t won a title <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/the_world_in_1908_the_last_time_the_cubs_won_the_world_series.html">since the Theodore Roosevelt administration</a>, and people at Wrigley knew they could be witnessing history. The fans had paid a lot of money for the privilege—seats were going for thousands of dollars on the secondary market, and our supervisors reminded us repeatedly to kneel down so as not to block the views our customers had spent so much money to acquire. Celebrity fans abounded: I sold a beer to Bill Murray, who was sitting a few rows down from former NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb, who was wearing a Cubs jersey with his own name and number on the back. About 20 rows up from Murray and McNabb was comedian Jeff Garlin. “Your movie was underrated,” I whispered in his ear as I passed. “Thank you, my friend,” he said. I probably should have specified which movie I was talking about.</p>
<p>Then the Cubs lost Game 3, and the optimism dipped a little bit. It didn’t dip by a lot—it was a very close game, after all—but things were definitely more tense as Game 4 got started. “Yes, we <em>lost</em> yesterday, but we still played good baseball,” I reminded my customers. “The Cubs are still the best team in baseball.” But they didn’t play like it in Game 4. After retiring the side with ease in the first inning, starting pitcher John Lackey surrendered a home run to the first batter he faced in the second. Then, after two successive errors by third baseman Kris Bryant, the Indians scored again. In the top of the third, after two consecutive hits, they scored <em>again</em>, and at that point the mood turned darker. I was selling a beer to the MSNBC host Chris Hayes—who was also wearing a jersey with his own name on it—when Lackey allowed that third run. “<em>Fuck</em> you, Lackey!” he yelled. I felt like joining him.</p>
<p>Downstairs in the vendors’ commissary, the mood was just as glum. “Game’s over,” my co-workers said as they restocked. “They choked. It’s done.” The crowd felt it, too. Around the fifth inning, I watched an upset fan stalk the concourse separating the left-field grandstand from the box seats, trying in vain to energize the quiet crowd. “What is <em>wrong</em> with you people?” he howled. “You need to make some <em>noise</em>!”</p>
<p>By Game 5, the optimism that had characterized so much of this season had curdled into anxiety. I was extremely anxious myself. I stopped looking out for celebrities and completely dispensed with the light banter I had shared with fans before Games 3 and 4. I poured my beers in silence, rarely initiating a conversation. My internal monologue, though, was full of self-recriminations:<em> You let them fool you again, Justin. You let this fucking team fool you again.</em></p>
<p>And then the Cubs played well, and it was OK to breathe again. By time the seventh inning rolled around, the Cubs were up 3–2 and shutdown closer Aroldis Chapman was warming up in the bullpen. At that point, I had relaxed enough to go up to the musician Billy Corgan and give him a small pep talk. “I appreciate you,” I said, and he had relaxed enough to reciprocate the sentiment with an enthusiastic fist bump. “Never stop,” I said as I walked away. I’m not sure why I said that. It was a strange time.</p>
<p>My vending season was done at that point. I tipped out of the commissary, swiped out of the stadium, and walked down to Schuba’s on Belmont and Southport to catch the final two innings. I pulled up a barstool next to an intense Cubs fan who looked eerily like one of my journalism colleagues. When Chapman struck out Jose Ramirez to win the game and send the World Series back to Cleveland, not-a-colleague and I pumped our fists and exchanged high-fives. “One game at a time,” we told each other. “One game at a time.”</p>
<p>The Cubs won Game 6, which I watched in my apartment, alone. I was prepared to do the same on Wednesday night, until my sister persuaded me to stop being a lamewad and come to Manhattan to watch with her and her friends. I went back to Avenue A on Wednesday night for the first time in a very long time. I donned the same Kerry Wood jersey I wore in 2003, and I went to a disgusting, grimy bar, where I stood next to several hundred other expatriate Cubs fans who all wanted their team to do this thing that none of us had ever seen them do. I offered up my baseball-fan heart. Today, that heart is full.</p>Thu, 03 Nov 2016 18:10:34 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/i_worked_as_a_wrigley_field_beer_vendor_during_the_world_series.htmlJustin Peters2016-11-03T18:10:34ZAnd other World Series tales from a Chicago Cubs vendor.SportsWhat It Was Like to Work as a Wrigley Field Beer Vendor During the World Series100161103007baseballworld serieschicagoJustin PetersSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/i_worked_as_a_wrigley_field_beer_vendor_during_the_world_series.htmlfalsefalsefalseWhat it was like to work as a Wrigley Field beer vendor during the World Series:I sold Bill Murray a beer and told Billy Corgan, “I appreciate you.”Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesBill Murray sings “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the seventh inning in Game 3 of the World Series on Friday in Chicago.A Better Marathon Time Calculatorhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/calculate_your_marathon_time_with_this_calculator.html
<p><em>Two years ago, <strong>Slate</strong></em><strong> </strong><em>ran a </em><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/10/running_calculator_introducing_slate_s_marathon_time_predictor_a_better.html"><em>marathon prediction calculator</em></a><em>. In the years since, the researchers have updated their work (and the writer became a </em>FiveThirtyEight<em> staff writer). We’ve collaborated with </em>FiveThirtyEigh<em>t to publish this follow-up article about the calculator updates. (It appears on both sites.) To check out the updated calculator, head over to </em><a href="http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/marathon-calculator/">FiveThirtyEight</a><em>.</em></p>
<p>A few years ago, I contacted Andrew Vickers to pick his brain about statistical methods in clinical research. Vickers, a statistician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, was happy to discuss stats with me, but what he really wanted to talk about was running. Specifically, the race time predictors commonly <a href="http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/general/rws-race-time-predictor/1681.html">found at websites such as <em>Runner’s World</em></a> that use your time from one race to predict what your finish time will be for a race of another distance. You type in your 5K result, for instance, and it tells you what time to expect for a 10K or a marathon.</p>
<p>These online calculators are usually based an algorithm <a href="http://www.runscore.com/coursemeasurement/Articles/ARHE.pdf">published back in 1981</a> by an engineer named Peter Riegel. The concept is simple—as the race distance increases, the maximum pace you can maintain decreases, which means your 10K time will be more than just double your 5K time. The Riegel formula accounts for this slowing by incorporating a “fatigue factor,” a constant known here as <em>k</em>.</p>
<p>Vickers had scrutinized the Riegel formula and thought that it underestimated marathon times. To bolster his point, he told me that he’d recently run a 2:59 marathon, yet the race calculators would have predicted a finish time of 2:48 based on his most recent half-marathon result. If he’d paced his race based on that prediction, he might have set himself up to run out of gas before the finish.<strong> </strong>&nbsp;</p>
<p>He proposed a project: I’d write a story about his misgivings regarding the Riegel formula and ask readers to fill out a form with their recent race times and a bit of other relevant information, and he’d use the data to create a more accurate formula. In April 2014, <strong><em>Slate</em></strong> published my <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/technology/2014/04/running_calculators_are_inaccurate_and_misleading_help_slate_build_a_better.html">initial story on the subject</a> and included a link to Vickers’ survey.</p>
<p>The survey received 2,497 responses, which Vickers and his colleague <a href="https://www.mskcc.org/profile/emily-vertosick">Emily Vertosick</a> used to look for factors that are linked to race performance and to come up with a <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/10/running_calculator_introducing_slate_s_marathon_time_predictor_a_better.html">better formula</a> for predicting finishing times, which I wrote about at <strong><em>Slate</em></strong>. Now they’ve <a href="https://bmcsportsscimedrehabil.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13102-016-0052-y">published their work</a> in the journal <em>BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation</em>.</p>
<p>The data set they were working from isn’t perfect: We solicited survey responses, which means the sample of respondents wasn’t really random, and we relied on people to self-report their times and other information, which they don’t always do accurately. But even with imperfect data, it looks like Vickers was right—the Riegel formula worked great for distances up to the half-marathon, but it underestimated marathon finishing times by 10 or more minutes for half of the runners in his sample. That’s a “humongous problem”<strong> </strong>for runners who use these calculators to plan their races, Vickers said,<strong> </strong>because pacing is crucial in marathons, where<strong> </strong>starting out too swiftly can cause runners to hit a wall of exhaustion long before the finish.</p>
<p>Start a marathon too slowly, and you can recoup some of the time you lost by picking up the pace when you find yourself with something left in the final miles, said Stephen Seiler, a sports scientist at University of Agder in Norway who was not involved in the study, “but there is no good way to get the monkey off your back if you have gone out too hard.” The optimal way to <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/sprinters-should-start-fast-everyone-else-should-finish-fast/">run a fast marathon</a> is with an <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23006811">even pace</a>, so that any changes in speed come as a kick at the end. Finding your ideal pace requires estimating the finishing time you’re capable of running—that’s what prediction calculators are meant to help you pinpoint.</p>
<p>The Riegel formula is modeled on world-record performances, but Vickers suspected that the numbers would be different for runners who weren’t at the world-class level. Recreational runners take at least an hour more to run their marathons compared with elite runners, so the margin for error is greater, Seiler said. “When an elite runner bonks, their performance decline in absolute terms is smaller than when the rec runner bonks.”</p>
<p>Another factor to consider: Some people are naturally faster at shorter distances than longer ones. “An elite runner who is strong on endurance and weak on speed will have a doubling time around 10 seconds per mile,” said <a href="http://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/the-endless-toil-of-the-big-data-guy">Ken Young</a>, a statistician with the <a href="http://www.arrs.net/">Association of Road Racing Statisticians</a>. In other words, he said, a top runner who can finish a 5K at 5:20 per mile can usually run a 10K at 5:30 per mile. “Similarly, a runner strong on speed and weak on endurance may have a doubling time of 20 sec/mile (or more),” Young said, so a 5:20 pace for 5K might translate into a 10K pace of 5:40. This difference in people’s natural abilities limits the accuracy of generalized algorithms that predict runners’ times, Young said.</p>
<p>Still, Vickers and Vertosick were determined to try to improve their formula, and their survey asked runners to rate themselves on a 10-point scale from “endurance runner” to “speed demon” to account for some of these differences in abilities. Using the survey data, the researchers created their new formula by randomly splitting the results into several groups. They used one group to develop a new formula, then they tested it on another group to validate the new equation. The Riegel formula relies solely on previous race times, but Vickers wanted to look for other factors that might better predict finishing times.</p>
<p>It turned out that several factors were correlated to quicker finishes. “People who run more miles have faster times, and people who ran intervals and <a href="http://runners-resource.com/training/tempo-run/">tempo runs</a> had faster times,” Vickers said. Runners who incorporated interval workouts into their training ran about 3 percent faster than those who didn’t.<strong> </strong>“We found that intervals helped about the same amount, no matter what the length of the race, and the same was true for mileage,” Vickers said.<strong> </strong>Tempo runs, on the other hand, corresponded to faster times for short races more so than for long ones.</p>
<p>In the survey sample, women were about 20 percent slower than men at the 5K, but the difference dropped to 10 percent for the marathon. This finding contrasts with results from elite runners, where the range of differences in world-best performances between men and women is much smaller, between 10 percent and 12.5 percent across all distances.<strong> </strong>That discrepancy doesn’t surprise sport scientist Ross Tucker. He said that research in South Africa has shown that if a man and a woman have similar times over one distance, the woman will usually be faster than the man at a longer race and slower than the man at a shorter one. “So if you and I are matched at 10K,” Tucker told me, “then you’ll likely be faster than me at the 21K and marathon, but I’ll most likely be better than you at 5K.”</p>
<p>After analyzing the relationships between among factors, Vickers and Vertosick found that two factors were the best predictors of final race times: average weekly training mileage and previous race times. Their new formula uses these two inputs to calculate<strong> </strong>a predicted time.</p>
<p>You can try it out <a href="http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/marathon-calculator/">here</a> and let us know how it does.</p>Thu, 03 Nov 2016 18:03:11 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/calculate_your_marathon_time_with_this_calculator.htmlChristie Aschwanden2016-11-03T18:03:11ZTwo years ago, we introduced our marathon calculator. Now, it’s gotten an update.SportsOur Updated Marathon Pacing Calculator Might Save You Some Suffering100161103006Christie AschwandenSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/calculate_your_marathon_time_with_this_calculator.htmlfalsefalsefalseRunning a marathon? Use our new and improved calculator:Better have something left at the end.Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile via Getty ImagesRunning the 2016 Dublin Marathon.It Will Never Be This Good Againhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/a_red_sox_fan_s_advice_on_winning_the_world_series.html
<p><em>This piece has been updated to reflect the Cubs' World Series win.</em></p>
<p>The Chicago Cubs are no longer massive losers. Early on Thursday morning, the Cubs earned their first World Series title since 1908, beating the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in 10 innings in a decisive Game 7. Fans of the Boston Red Sox got to know what winning felt like 12 years ago, when Pedro Martinez, David Ortiz, Dave Roberts, and friends took out the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series and then the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. How does it feel for a downtrodden fan base to finally get the victory it’s been waiting for? On the eve of Game 7, <strong><em>Slate</em></strong>’s sports editor Josh Levin talked to <strong><em>Slate</em></strong> contributor, Massachusetts native, and Boston sports fan Seth Stevenson about that curse-breaking 2004 playoff run and whether he misses the high-stakes, high-anxiety days of pre-championship fandom. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.</p>
<p><strong>What does it feel like in the immediate moments after your team wins the World Series?</strong></p>
<p>With the Red Sox in 2004, it was as much about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_American_League_Championship_Series">coming back from 3–0 to beat the Yankees</a> as it was winning the World Series. What I remember is walking around the day after the Sox won the ALCS, with my Red Sox cap on and spotting other Red Sox caps, just nodding to each other and feeling full of goodwill and pride that whole next day.</p>
<p>The immediate feeling, it’s like an out-of-body experience, like you took a Vicodin and everything is wonderful and cinematic. A weight gets removed from you, this thing that you didn’t even realize was there on your shoulders. You feel weightless for a time—that will last for several days. It’s a sense that all is well with the universe.<br /> </p>
<p><strong>How long did it take for that initial feeling to wear off? I imagine you’re thinking about it all the next day, and it’s all you’re thinking about. And then one day you realize you’re not thinking about it anymore.</strong></p>
<p>Yeah, it probably took like four days. But even then it was still a significant part of my thinking. Through at least Christmas, I would think about it a lot, and it would feel so good. I went to the ring ceremony in Fenway on Opening Day the next year <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2005/04/hub_fans_bid_bling_hello.html">to write a dispatch for <strong><em>Slate</em></strong></a>. By then, that initial thrill had faded. It was a formal marking of, <em>Yes, we did this</em>, but that pure euphoria had faded.</p>
<p><strong>What was it like watching the Red Sox, defending World Series champions, during that 2005 season?</strong></p>
<p>In 2005, they made the playoffs <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/2005_ALDS1.shtml">and got crushed by the White Sox</a>. It was pretty much the same team, and I remember thinking, <em>What happened?</em> The 2004 team seemed willed by the hand of God, and then the 2005 team just loses unceremoniously in the first round. It made it feel more like happenstance and less like destiny, but maybe it was destiny that was required to reverse the curse. I don’t really believe in fate, but the thought crossed my mind.</p>
<p><strong>When they lost in 2005 and in the years after, did you feel content because the Red Sox had already won a championship?</strong></p>
<p>Oh, for sure. The fact that they lost the next year, it really didn’t bother me that much. It was surprising because it really was the same team—it seemed like they would probably do it again, and then they just didn’t. It was maybe a little disappointing that they didn’t cement themselves as an all-time great franchise, but it didn’t hurt that much.</p>
<p>To compare that to the pain of 2003—<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLY16wmHdUk">when Aaron Boone hit that home run</a>, that is by far, without any competition, the worst sports moment in my entire life. The morning after that happened, I remember thinking, <em>Why do I watch baseball?</em> Why do I spend months following the ups and downs of a team and knowing every last person on its roster and having strong feelings about middle relievers if it’s just going to build me up and create this intense pain and shame and a hollowness in my heart? I remember feeling very strongly the next day—maybe for a good three days after that loss—that I was going to stop watching baseball.</p>
<p>Losing to the White Sox in 2005 was nothing like that. I really couldn’t get too upset about it.</p>
<p><strong>Do you feel like the massive accumulation of pain over the years was worth it in the end?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, it was absolutely worth it. The way they lost to the Yankees in 2003 made it that much sweeter, and so powerful and so cathartic. If they’d done it without the loss from the year before, I would have been able to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18caPNisP2U">summon the pain of 1986</a> when I was in sixth grade. But it was so fresh in everyone’s mind, and it had been the worst way to lose. Looking back, I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen any differently.</p>
<p><strong>When they won the World Series again in 2007, did you feel like there were diminishing returns?</strong></p>
<p>Hugely diminishing. It was still really fun and really nice that they won, but it was not the same at all. They’d already broken the curse. They’d already avenged the horrible Yankees. It was just—it was really nice. I felt like a regular baseball fan again.</p>
<p><strong>What has it been like to root for a team that—though it hasn’t won every year—is perennially a contender and successful?</strong></p>
<p>It’s fun to be a Red Sox fan because they make the playoffs a lot. It’s a lot less fun when your team is mediocre or really has no prayer of making the playoffs. What’s fun about being a fan is watching your team in big games.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t really want to go back to how it was before 2004, although I do miss it sometimes. Watching the pre-2004 Red Sox was a completely different kind of fandom. It was like opera. It was life or death for me. I somehow felt like I couldn’t be a full person or a restful person until they won the World Series. After 2004, it was not that life-or-death feeling. It was not entwined with who I am as a person. It was just like watching baseball. I miss that passion, I miss that life-or-death, that whole-body feeling I used to have watching baseball. But it was kind of a relief to be honest, to just watch my team like a fan of any other team, to just be happy when they won and disappointed when they lost.</p>Wed, 02 Nov 2016 21:49:16 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/a_red_sox_fan_s_advice_on_winning_the_world_series.htmlJosh LevinSeth Stevenson2016-11-02T21:49:16ZA Red Sox fan on what it’s like to win the World Series after a very, very, very long championship drought.SportsRed Sox Fan to Cubs Fans: If They Win This Year, It Will Never Be This Good Again100161102020baseballJosh LevinSeth StevensonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/a_red_sox_fan_s_advice_on_winning_the_world_series.htmlfalsefalsefalseRed Sox fan to Cubs Fans: If they win this year, it will never be this good again“I wouldn’t really want to go back to how it was before 2004, although I do miss it sometimes.”Photo illustration by Slate. Images by Jamie Squire/Getty Images and Essdras M Suarez/the Boston Globe via Getty ImagesIs that all there is?Racist Mascot Wins World Series, Presidencyhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/racist_mascot_wins_world_series_presidency.html
<p>This week and next week, two grand American contests are coming to a close. By Thursday morning, either the long-suffering Chicago Cubs or the long-suffering Cleveland Indians will be World Series champs and no longer long-suffering. By next Wednesday (we really, really hope), either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the United States’ president-elect. We’ve imagined what one of those baseball-and-politics scenarios might look like in the newspaper mock-up above.</p>
<p>You can check out the other three possible combinations below.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p><em>Photo illustrations by </em><strong><em>Slate</em></strong>. <em>Top paper: Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images and Justin Merriman/Getty Images. Second paper: Photos by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images and Elsa/Getty Images. Third paper: Photos by Elsa/Getty Images and Jan Kruger/Getty Images. Bottom paper: Photos by Jason Miller/Getty Images and Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.</em></p>Wed, 02 Nov 2016 20:36:09 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/racist_mascot_wins_world_series_presidency.htmlHolly AllenJosh LevinSeth Maxon2016-11-02T20:36:09ZHeadlines from the future.SportsRacist Mascot Wins World Series, Presidency1001611020152016 campaignbaseballworld seriesHolly AllenJosh LevinSeth MaxonSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/racist_mascot_wins_world_series_presidency.htmlfalsefalsefalseRacist mascot wins World Series, presidency:Headlines from the future.Aroldis Chapman and the Cost of Risk Aversionhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/how_joe_maddon_s_fear_of_losing_game_6_could_cost_the_cubs_in_game_7.html
<p><em>This </em><a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/aroldis-chapman-and-the-cost-of-risk-aversion/"><em>article</em></a><em> originally appeared in</em>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/">FanGraphs</a>.</p>
<p>In order to keep their season alive, the Chicago Cubs had to win Game 6. They won Game 6. On Wednesday night, they play for all the marbles, with one more win bringing the franchise their first championship in 108 years. From that perspective, Tuesday’s game was a success. Full stop.</p>
<p>But that perspective is a particularly binary view of the world, with only good and bad outcomes, and no room for the shades of gray that make up real life. In this world, things can be somewhat good, or very good, or painfully awful, or just kind of not great. In this world, we have not two possible outcomes but thousands of them, with differing levels of magnitude. And from a perspective that accounts for the different magnitudes of outcomes, this Cubs win isn’t quite as great as it could have been. This win came with a cost, and probably unnecessarily so.</p>
<p>Entering the bottom of the seventh inning, the Cubs led 7–2, giving them nine outs to keep the Cleveland Indians from scoring more than four runs. <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2016-11-01&amp;team=Indians&amp;dh=0&amp;season=2016">History tells us</a> that teams in this situation go on to win 96.7 percent of the time. But that 3.3 percent is not a comfortable 3.3 percent when that 1-in-30 chance means your season ends. Joe Maddon wanted to drive that number down to zero percent, so he had&nbsp;Aroldis Chapman&nbsp;getting loose in case Cleveland started to rally.</p>
<p>Mike Montgomery got&nbsp;Rajai Davis&nbsp;out to lead off the inning. Eight outs to go, win expectancy up to 97.6 percent. But then he walked&nbsp;Roberto Perez, putting it back to 96.5 percent, and Chapman started to throw.&nbsp;Carlos Santana&nbsp;flied out. Seven outs to go, win expectancy at 97.8 percent.&nbsp;Jason Kipnis&nbsp;singled: 96.9 percent. With&nbsp;Francisco Lindor and&nbsp;Mike Napoli&nbsp;due up next, Maddon didn’t want to entrust his second-best lefty with the responsibility of getting out the team’s two middle-of-the-order righties. So in came Chapman, with seven outs to go, protecting a five-run lead.</p>
<p>For Maddon, and all the other new-school managers this postseason, this has been the decision.&nbsp;Dave Roberts&nbsp;called on&nbsp;Kenley Jansen&nbsp;for a four-out save in <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN201610180.shtml">Game 3 of the National League Championship Series</a>, despite his team leading 4–0, and left Jansen in to pitch the ninth even after the team pushed its lead to 6–0.&nbsp;Cody Allen&nbsp;pitched the ninth inning of <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE201610250.shtml">Game 1 of the World Series</a> even with his team up 6–0. Bullpens have been managed in a radically different way this postseason, but the strategy of doing whatever it takes to protect a lead, no matter how large, has survived the revolution.</p>
<p>The justification for these decisions is pretty simple: Managers are erring on the side of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion">risk aversion</a>, not wanting to see their inferior relievers allow a rally that forces their best relievers into tough situations when they could just use the dominating guy first and avoid the potential stress altogether. If you put&nbsp;Pedro Strop&nbsp;or Carl Edwards or&nbsp;Justin Grimm&nbsp;on the mound in the seventh inning, and Lindor and Napoli keep the inning going, you’re going to have to use Chapman anyway, and now the game will be wildly different. Slam the door, win today, and figure out tomorrow tomorrow.</p>
<p>But that’s the binary worldview again. That doesn’t allow for there to be different levels of useful wins, or for what happens today to have a real impact on what happens tomorrow. In the world we’re actually in, where shades exist, this was about as great of a loss as Cleveland could hope for, because the Cubs gave up their best kind of win in order to secure a slightly more certain lesser win.</p>
<p>For the Tribe, they lost, but they lost without throwing&nbsp;Andrew Miller&nbsp;or Cody Allen. They didn’t even throw&nbsp;Bryan Shaw. By getting down big early,&nbsp;Terry Francona&nbsp;was able to lose with his JV pitchers. And now, in the real winner-takes-all game, he’ll have his three best relief arms completely fresh and ready to go.</p>
<p>Joe Maddon could have had that, too. Had he resisted the urge to use Chapman to protect a five-run lead, he could have had the only reliever he really trusts right now completely rested for Game 7. Instead, Chapman threw 20 pitches on Tuesday night, and warmed up three times—once to come in, and twice between innings—while recording five outs. Chapman will still definitely pitch in Game 7, but now, his outing will come with real uncertainty.</p>
<p>To be clear, we don’t know what pitching in Game 6 will do to Chapman’s effectiveness or endurance in Game 7. No one does. It might not do anything. Perhaps the adrenaline provided from pitching in Game 7 of the World Series will overcome any kind of fatigue that might set in after throwing 62 pitches in the previous three days. Maybe Chapman, <a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/aroldis-chapman-without-his-command/">who has struggled with his command at times </a>this postseason, will locate better at 99 than he would have at 102. Maybe the Cubs will crush&nbsp;Corey Kluber&nbsp;in the first inning and Chapman’s ability to work multiple innings will have no impact on the outcome whatsoever.</p>
<p>To pretend that this is an area where we can definitely show the precise cost being paid would be folly. But uncertainty in and of itself is a cost, and it’s one the Cubs will now pay because <em>they also don’t know</em> what pitching tonight will do to Chapman’s performance tomorrow. They can hope the impact is zero. They can believe that Chapman will still be Chapman, throwing gas for as long as he’s asked to throw gas. But the ability to plan on Chapman entering the game in the seventh inning, and pitching you all the way through the ninth? You can’t do that anymore, because Chapman’s usage on Tuesday made his ability to do it again on Wednesday uncertain.</p>
<p>If they hadn’t used Chapman, the Cubs probably could have told him he was getting the last nine outs in Game 7, and prepared him to start the seventh inning, regardless of the score. That would have left only 18 outs for&nbsp;Kyle Hendricks&nbsp;and&nbsp;Jon Lester, the team’s two best starting pitchers this year, to tag-team their way through. But I don’t know how you plan to give Chapman nine outs now, and perhaps more importantly, I don’t know how you create a plan for Game 7 that doesn’t require a reasonable contingency if Chapman looks diminished when he enters. Now, you need a Plan B.</p>
<p>And so now, Maddon might have to choose which reliever he might trust to pick Chapman up if the workload proves to be an issue, and he’ll either have to pick from among the pitchers he didn’t trust with a five-run lead in Game 6, or perhaps one of the starters-available-out-of-the-pen that could have otherwise been used before Chapman took the mound. If Maddon had a two-days-rest Chapman tomorrow, there would be little harm in throwing both Jon Lester and&nbsp;John Lackey&nbsp;in relief of Kyle Hendricks, allowing him to remove Hendricks from the game early if need be.</p>
<p>Now, though, at least one of those two is probably hanging back in reserve. The Cubs pitching staff in Game 7 could have been almost ideal, with the team capable of getting multiple innings from four really good pitchers, locking out all the pitchers that Maddon doesn’t trust from a game where Cleveland will almost certainly rely only on Corey Kluber, Andrew Miller, Cody Allen, and maybe Bryan Shaw.</p>
<p>But now, the Cubs will likely have to extend Hendricks longer, as the bridge to Chapman is less secure, and the team can’t be as confident that Chapman will be the lockdown relief ace they acquired him to be. And the Cleveland blueprint is clear; if they have the lead after four innings, they’re going to make the Cubs score the tying run against Andrew Miller. Any hole Hendricks might dig in the third or fourth inning could end up being the Cubs' grave.</p>
<p>None of this is certain, of course. Because it’s baseball, there’s a good chance that none of this will matter, and the outcome of Game 7 will be determined by something completely unrelated to the Cubs’ reliever usage in Game 6.</p>
<p>But on Tuesday night, Joe Maddon chose to give into the fear of the 3 percent, believing that his secondary relievers weren’t capable of holding a five-run lead and not believing in his offense to help them win the game back even if they did. He managed not to lose Game 6 instead of managing to win Game 7 at a point in which Game 7 was pretty close to already secure. The emotional desire to not even flirt with blowing a lead, ending the team’s season in the process, overcame the rational reality that the game was mostly already over.</p>
<p>So Aroldis Chapman got five outs that the other Cubs relievers probably could have gotten. Those outs may well have been borrowed from Game 7, in a situation where the Cubs might really be able to use a full-strength Chapman on the mound. But they won’t have that, because when push came to shove, Joe Maddon only trusts one of his relievers right now.</p>
<p>For his sake, I hope he doesn’t need that one reliever to bail him out on Wednesday.</p>
<p><em>Check out</em>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/">FanGraphs</a>&nbsp;<em>for more World Series analysis, plus a live blog of Game 7.</em></p>Wed, 02 Nov 2016 18:02:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/how_joe_maddon_s_fear_of_losing_game_6_could_cost_the_cubs_in_game_7.htmlDave Cameron2016-11-02T18:02:00ZHow Joe Maddon’s fear of losing Game 6 could cost the Cubs in Game 7.SportsHow Joe Maddon’s Fear of Losing Game 6 Could Cost the Chicago Cubs in Game 7100161102010sportsbaseballworld seriesDave CameronSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/11/how_joe_maddon_s_fear_of_losing_game_6_could_cost_the_cubs_in_game_7.htmlfalsefalsefalseHow Joe Maddon’s fear of losing Game 6 could cost the Cubs in Game 7:The Cubs’ win came with a cost, and probably unnecessarily so.Elsa/Getty ImagesChicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon leaves the field after relieving Jake Arrieta during the sixth inning in Game 6 of the 2016 World Series on Tuesday.Why Chief Wahoo Is Still Grinninghttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/why_the_protests_against_chief_wahoo_never_work.html
<p>Outside the northeast gate of Cleveland’s Progressive Field, a handful of longtime Chief Wahoo protesters assembled Tuesday evening to assume the same formation, and in many cases wield the same signs, that they’ve assumed and wielded for decades. “The Real Cleveland Indians,” read one placard, depicting images of local Native Americans in traditional garments. “People Not Mascots,” declared another. In recent years, when protesters have gathered here on opening day, passersby fueled by booze have been eager to engage, hurling invective and obscenities in between their war whoops. Before Game 1 of the World Series, though, most Indians fans shuffled past the protest without saying much, their eyes on the prize of the Indians’ first championship since 1948.</p>
<p>There were notable exceptions—middle fingers extended, heads shaken, Native cred proclaimed. “I’m half Indian and I could care less!” cried one fan, Wahoo-jacketed against the wind. The evening’s most unusual interaction came at 7:15 p.m., a little less than an hour before the first pitch, when a wobbly middle-age woman approached the protesters—there were about 10 of them—placed her hand on her heart, and solemnly professed, “Chief Wahoo is my beloved man.” She looked to be on the verge of tears. “I. Belove. Him.”</p>
<p>“Him?” One protester asked, astonished. “But he’s not real.”</p>
<p>“Oh, yes he is,” the woman shouted as she scurried off. “Yes he is!”</p>
<p>While Indians fans appeared unmoved by this most-recent push to erase the racist caricature, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred did say this week that he and Indians owner Larry Dolan<a href="http://deadspin.com/rob-manfred-hints-at-meeting-with-indians-ownership-to-1788235022"> will “have a conversation” about the future of Chief Wahoo</a> after the World Series. That announcement has been met with managed expectations by anti-Wahoo activists. “I think it’s a wait-and-see good sign,” said Robert Roche, a Chiricahua Apache and Native American activist who’s best known for his confrontation with a fan in red-face<a href="http://www.clevelandfrowns.com/2014/04/redface-has-another-big-day-at-the-ballpark-in-cleveland/"> on opening day in 2014</a>.</p>
<p>The sense of optimism is tempered by the fact that the Indians have worn Chief Wahoo on their caps every game this postseason. That’s despite the fact that just six months ago, at the beginning of this season, co-owner Paul Dolan (Larry’s son) said <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/pluto/index.ssf/2016/04/cleveland_indians_owner_paul_d_7.html#incart_river_index">the team planned to de-emphasize the buck-toothed, red-faced logo</a> (the first version of which was created in 1947) in favor of the “<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=cleveland+indians+block+c&amp;espv=2&amp;biw=1384&amp;bih=780&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiLscC52P3PAhXHGj4KHUlgCZIQ_AUIBigB&amp;dpr=1">Block C</a>.”</p>
<p>Roche, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundance_(activist)">Sundance</a>—the executive director of the American Indian Movement’s Cleveland chapter—and others have long sought meetings with the Indians’ front office to no avail. The last time the Dolans participated in any kind of <a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/stupub/ocreview/archives/2001.02.09/news/ARTICLE01.html">meaningful exchange about Chief Wahoo came in 2001</a>, in a conversation at Oberlin College. “I firmly reject that Wahoo is racist,” Larry Dolan, a trustee at the college, said to students and professors. “I think I understand racism when I see it.”</p>
<p>The wording of that statement calls to mind Washington NFL team owner <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/redskins/2013/05/09/washington-redskins-daniel-snyder/2148127/">Daniel Snyder’s interview with <em>USA Today</em> in 2013</a> when he talked about his team’s “great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means.” In that interview, Snyder said, “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER—you can use caps.” History suggests owners like Snyder and Dolan usually get their way. It’s unlikely this week’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/sports/baseball/cleveland-indians-native-americans-world-series-protest.html?_r=0">abundance of awareness-building Chief Wahoo coverage</a> will accomplish much at all. In fact, given the current climate of Cleveland sports fanaticism, increased pressure on the Indians to eliminate the chief might actually be counterproductive.</p>
<p>Here in Cleveland, we’ve seen this all before. The arguments now getting probed and postulated in the national press have been likewise probed and postulated <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/02/the_tribe_should_retire_chief.html">in the pages of the <em>Plain Dealer</em></a><em>, </em>the <em>Scene </em>(the alt-weekly I work for), and other publications in the region. Whenever the <em>Scene</em> <a href="http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2014/04/04/its-not-racist-and-other-responses-to-wahoo-protesters-at-home-opener">publishes a piece on Chief Wahoo</a>, untold trolls awaken from their slumbers to decry it as PC nonsense.</p>
<p>“It really is insane,” said Cleveland City Councilman Brian Cummins, a left-leaning progressive who’s worked for years with activists in town. When Cummins posted an anti-Wahoo message on Facebook recently, he was inundated with attacks. “I had a woman, a neighbor<em> </em>of mine, just trash me completely,” Cummins said by phone. “As an elected official, I’m frustrated. It’s disappointing that a vocal part of the fan base has no room for any empathy on the issue.”</p>
<p>What Cummins calls a lack of empathy is merely the default setting in Cleveland, one that’s defended as “affection for a cartoon” or “nostalgia” or “Cleveland pride.” Chief Wahoo, the thinking goes, is a benevolent symbol that represents a benevolent franchise. It’d be difficult to overstate just how pervasive and deep this thinking goes. Wahoo is tattooed not only on Clevelanders’ arms and hearts, <a href="http://clevelandmagazine.com/in-the-cle/ink-stained">as Scott Raab noted in a 2014 plea to retire the logo</a>, but on the region’s whole identity template. Larry Dolan’s comments during the Oberlin session in 2001 are representative ones. “I look on [Wahoo] as positive,” he said. “I have a warm, affectionate attitude toward Wahoo.”</p>
<p>One of the essential characteristics of diehard Wahoo supporters is that they believe all their warmth toward Wahoo invalidates the idea that, for many people, Chief Wahoo has been and continues to be a painful and dehumanizing image. What the protestors outside Progressive Field want, at the very least, is to make supporters think about what they’re<em> </em>supporting. That’s what happened with Pedro Rodriguez, the red-faced fan who confronted Robert Roche in 2014. Roche told Rodriguez in person that he “[did] not feel honored” by the garish costume. And voila, Rodriguez no longer wears red-face to Indians games, though <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/clevelands-chief-wahoo-why-the-most-offensive-image-in-sports-has-yet-to-die/2016/08/09/245156c6-58e6-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html">he continues to wear a Wahoo hat</a>.</p>
<p>But huge and vocal swaths of the pro-Wahoo crowd would prefer to dismiss the Wahoo issue out of hand. They tend to see the increased media exposure as a kind of call to arms—as a sign that Chief Wahoo, Cleveland’s beloved “him,” is under attack. And the best way to defend the chief, in a war with so much at stake, is to buy as much Chief Wahoo merchandise as possible.</p>
<p>In 2013, <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/11574381/cleveland-indians-say-goodbye-chief-wahoo">ESPN reported</a>, three of the four top-selling baseball caps in the Indians team shop did not feature Chief Wahoo. Writer Steve Wulf deployed that stat to demonstrate that the Indians’ “phase-out” of Chief Wahoo appeared to be working. (Wulf was advocating a clean break.) The phase-out began, at least in part, in 2009 at the urging of former team president and GM Mark Shapiro, who recently admitted that he was “personally bothered” by the Chief Wahoo logo. In 2011,<a href="http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/cleveland-indians-downgrade-chief-wahoo-to-secondary-logo-040216"> the team excised the chief from the caps it wore on the road</a>, and the red-faced caricature got nixed from the Indians’ batting helmets in 2013. “We built equity in the ‘Block C,’ “ Shapiro said <a href="http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/shapiro-indians-chief-wahoo-logo-personally-bothered/">in a recent interview</a>. “We gave that alternative for people and I think that we established that as an important logo and now the primary logo for the Cleveland Indians.” He added: “I think there will be a day, whenever that is, that the people that are making decisions here decide that Chief Wahoo is no longer fitting. But people in this city—over 90 percent of them—are deeply, deeply passionate about Chief Wahoo and want him to be part of their team.”</p>
<p>They sure do. They’ll even pay for it. Shapiro’s comments hint at Wahoo’s financial impact. It’s easy to surmise that Shapiro’s abstract future date when “Chief Wahoo is no longer fitting” will be precisely the day on which it becomes more financially attractive to get rid of him than to keep him.</p>
<p>It just so happens, though, that Chief Wahoo is currently on a hot streak. Though the franchise hasn’t offered any explanation for why the Indians have worn Chief Wahoo caps in every one of their postseason games in 2016, the results at the cash registers are clear: <a href="http://www.mlbshop.com/Cleveland_Indians_Caps/pg/1/ps/60/so/top_sellers">The three top-selling caps</a> in the team shop bear the Wahoo image. Clevelanders <a href="https://twitter.com/SceneSallard/status/745352345802907649">love splurging on postseason merch</a>, so Cleveland will soon be flooded with Chief Wahoo gear.</p>
<p>In 2015, after the <em>Plain Dealer </em>came out against Chief Wahoo,<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/clevelands-chief-wahoo-why-the-most-offensive-image-in-sports-has-yet-to-die/2016/08/09/245156c6-58e6-11e6-9aee-8075993d73a2_story.html"> a Wahoo cap once again became the top-selling headwear in the team shop</a>.<em> </em>Though there have been no official reports on sales figures, there are three possible explanations for Wahoo’s return to dominance:</p>
<ol>
<li>When the Block C arrived, it was trendy and cool—even Wahoo supporters wanted Block C hats. The popularity Wulf noted may have just been a temporary spike.<em></em></li>
<li>Cleveland fans might have been concerned about a complete Wahoo phase-out after the <em>Plain Dealer </em>editorial and growing national opposition to Native American nicknames and mascots. They wanted to get Wahoo gear while there was still time, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/11/obama.gun.sales/">just as gun sales increased</a> when presumed firearms-confiscator Barack Obama got elected president.</li>
<li>As hypothesized above, the public debate on Chief Wahoo functioned as a call to arms. The pro-Wahoo side doubled down and bought even <em>more </em>gear to certify their support of the Chief.</li>
</ol>
<p>The third explanation is further evidenced by the rise of pro–Chief Wahoo apparel, courtesy of local designers eager to cash in on the controversy. As the debate became hotter and more contentious in 2014, a local T-shirt company released a <a href="http://gvartwork.com/products/keep-the-chief-in-cleveland-t-shirt">“Keep the Chief” shirt</a> that has become one of its best-selling items. “One of the most famous and most recognizable logos in all of sports belongs to Cleveland,” reads the product description. “So let’s embrace it and fight for it to stay as a part of Cleveland History. This is not meant to offend anyone. … We understand both opinions but ours is to keep the logo that has been around since the 1940s and therefore we wanted to design something cool for those who share the same opinion.”</p>
<p>As far as the team is concerned, having <em>two </em>logos—not unlike having primary and alternate jerseys, to say nothing of throwbacks—just means more products to sell. And if one of those products is a logo fans feel strongly about, then all the better.</p>
<p>The doubling down by Wahoo supporters, if in fact that’s what’s going on, has historical precedent. Consider the story of Dick Jacobs, who owned the Indians from 1986–1999 and was the namesake of Jacobs Field, since renamed Progressive Field. (<a href="http://teamcle.storenvy.com/products/1281239-its-still-the-jake">“I still call it the Jake” shirts</a> are another example of how nostalgia is commodified on the shores of Lake Erie.) Cartoonist Derf Backderf, an icon of Cleveland’s literary underground, wrote in <a href="http://derfcity.blogspot.com/2014/04/de-chiefing-wahoo-part-2.html">a blog post in 2014</a> that Jacobs, after he and his brother bought the “moribund franchise” in 1986, promised to revitalize the team by “embracing Indians history.”</p>
<p>In the early 1990s, Derf wrote, around the time the team was preparing to move out of the industrial Cleveland Municipal Stadium, Wahoo was on its way out, “quietly fading away much like the Cleveland Browns mascot, the Brownie, had a generation earlier.” But in the face of opposition from Native American groups and a few sharp local critics—among them Derf himself, who published a series of anti-Wahoo cartoons in the now-defunct <em>Cleveland Edition</em>—Jacobs “threw a temper tantrum. <em>Nobody</em> told this plutocrat what to do! Not the mayor, not the voters and&nbsp;certainly not some fucking poet and a guy who draws funnies!”</p>
<p>In 1993, Jacobs announced that after careful consideration, he’d decided to keep the Chief. “When Jacobs Field opened in April 1994,” Derf wrote in 2014, “that grinning red abomination was everywhere. He’s been the&nbsp;appallingly racist face of the franchise ever since.”</p>
<p>Jacobs’ 1993 defense of the Chief created the template for the Dolans’ public statements and for the defensive, it’s-not-racist-because-I-like-it responses of most Cleveland fans. “I believe Chief Wahoo is a likable character that helps the fans identify with the team and creates excitement,” Jacobs said. “When I look at the logo, I don’t think of American Indians at all, I think of the team.” When asked how he felt about protests, the owner shrugged the whole thing off. “What’s a day without getting booed and jeered by somebody?”</p>
<p>Despite his hatred of Dick Jacobs and Chief Wahoo, Derf was a season ticket–holder when Jacobs Field opened in 1994—he just loved the Indians too much to stay away. The number of season ticket holders, incidentally, is expected to increase next year after the Indians’ impressive postseason run. And even after <a href="https://twitter.com/darrenrovell/status/791470568080015360">all the national disbelief and opprobrium</a>, betting odds are that in 2017, most of the fans who pack into the ballpark on opening day will be sporting the “grinning red abomination” on their caps, their jerseys, and their freshly tattooed skin. As they make their way into the stadium, they’ll shuffle past the same old handful of protesters. Emboldened by victory, they may feel even less guilty about not giving the Native Americans in their midst a second glance.</p>Fri, 28 Oct 2016 17:50:39 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/why_the_protests_against_chief_wahoo_never_work.htmlSam Allard2016-10-28T17:50:39ZProtests against the Cleveland Indians’ racist, red-faced caricature never work. They just make its supporters stronger.SportsWhy the Protests Against Chief Wahoo Never Work100161028016sportsbaseballworld seriesSam AllardSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/why_the_protests_against_chief_wahoo_never_work.htmlfalsefalsefalseWhy the protests against Chief Wahoo never work:They just make supporters of the Cleveland Indians’ racist, red-faced caricature stronger.Photo illustration by Slate. Images by Jamie Squire/Getty Images and Jason Miller/Getty Images.It Might Be. It Could Be. It Is?http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/can_you_tell_a_home_run_from_a_fly_ball_take_our_video_quiz.html
<p>The ball is sailing deep—very deep. You jump out of your seat, pump your arms up and down, high-five everyone in a 10-mile radius … and the ball settles into an outfielder’s glove for a routine catch. We’ve all suffered the embarrassment of celebrating a potential home run prematurely. It’s tough to tell how far a ball will fly off the bat, and the varying dimensions of major-league ballparks make it all the more difficult to discern whether a towering fly ball will scrape over the wall. Some of us, though, are better than others at separating big flies from fly-ball outs. How do your homer-detecting skills compare to those of fellow fans? Take our video quiz below to find out.</p>
<p><em><strong>Update, Oct. 26, 2016: </strong>Because of a technical problem, users on mobile devices won't be able to take the entire quiz.</em><br /> </p>Tue, 25 Oct 2016 20:36:28 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/can_you_tell_a_home_run_from_a_fly_ball_take_our_video_quiz.htmlNoor GillAndrew KahnJosh Levin2016-10-25T20:36:28ZCan you tell a home run from a fly ball? Take our video quiz.SportsCan You Tell a Home Run From a Fly Ball, Based on the Batter’s Swing? Take Our Video Quiz.100161025014baseballsportsNoor GillAndrew KahnJosh LevinSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/can_you_tell_a_home_run_from_a_fly_ball_take_our_video_quiz.htmlfalsefalsefalseCan you tell a home run from a fly ball, based on the batter’s swing? Take our quiz:It might be. It could be. It is?Scott Kane/Getty ImagesDexter Fowler of the Cubs watches as a home run ball hit by Matt Adams of the Cardinals lands over the centerfield wall at Busch Stadium on May 23 in St. Louis.The Curse Breakerhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/theo_epstein_saved_the_red_sox_now_he_s_rescuing_the_cubs_here_s_how.html
<p>There are only so many owners and executives in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Tom Yawkey, who owned the Boston Red Sox from 1933 until his death in 1976, is one of them. When Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein is inducted, which will surely happen if his team beats the Cleveland Indians in the 2016 World Series, it would be fitting if there was a parallel action to take Yawkey out. After all, Epstein’s career, which already includes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/after-this-world-series-winning-players-will-be-legends-in-their-cities-forever/2016/10/24/54ceb4d2-9a1e-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html">breaking baseball’s <em>other </em>multigenerational championship drought</a>, will have served as the ultimate corrective to the incompetence of people like Yawkey, who were responsible for “cursing” these teams in the first place.</p>
<p>Given that Fox’s World Series broadcasts will inevitably refer to the combatants’ long championship droughts approximately once every 3.5 seconds—that’s since 1908 for the Cubs and since 1948 for the Indians—it seems almost cruel to mention them now. Yet the Cubs’ drought, <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/the_world_in_1908_the_last_time_the_cubs_won_the_world_series.html">which stretches back to the Theodore Roosevelt administration</a> and through two World Wars, includes seven trips to the World Series between 1910 and 1945, and spans the complete lifespan of Ernie Banks, is key to understanding Epstein’s unique r&eacute;sum&eacute;. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Gillick">Other general managers</a> have won championships in two cities. But no one in baseball history has slayed the dragons that Theo Epstein has slayed.</p>
<p>A graduate of Yale University, Epstein <a href="http://www.baseballamerica.com/execdb/?show=exec&amp;eid=epsteth01">spent the early part of his baseball career</a> associated with Baltimore Orioles and San Diego Padres executive Larry Lucchino, under whom he rose to be director of baseball operations for the Padres while still in his mid-20s. Warning: If anyone’s life story is going to make you feel like an underachiever, it’s Epstein’s; he earned a law degree at the same time he was rising through the Padres organization. In December 2001, John Henry became principal owner of the Red Sox, his group buying the franchise from the trustees of Tom Yawkey and his late wife Jean. Lucchino, who was named the team’s president and CEO, brought Epstein to Boston, first as assistant general manager and then, after Billy Beane declined to come over from the Oakland A’s, as general manager beginning in November 2002. He was, at a month shy of his 29<sup>th</sup> birthday, <a href="http://www.si.com/vault/2002/12/23/8109398/the-babe-is-28yearold-theo-epsteinthe-youngest-gm-in-historyready-for-one-of-baseballs-most-scrutinized-jobs-running-the-red-sox-hed-better-be">the youngest GM in major league history</a>. Within two years he became the youngest GM to win a World Series. He picked up a second championship in 2007. After a few dry years, he left to join the Cubs as team president in October 2011. (Jed Hoyer, who worked with Epstein in Boston, came with him to Chicago to serve as the team’s general manager. The two men work in concert to make personnel decisions.) Now 42, he’s in a position to win a third World Series at an age when most GMs are just getting started.</p>
<p>When looking for a magic Epstein formula—a simple way of answering the question, “How did he do it?”—it’s important to note that the Red Sox and Cubs were in very different conditions when he got hold of them. The Red Sox, who had mostly been run by GM Dan Duquette since 1994, were in no way a losing franchise. You have to go back to the 1950s and 1960s, when Yawkey—sunk into alcoholic disinterest, <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/columns/story?id=4345309&amp;columnist=bryant_howard">resistance to integration</a> (the Red Sox were the last team to break the color line, doing so only in 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson), and resentment that Boston wouldn’t build him a new ballpark—allowed the team to drift through 15 years spent mostly in the second division. Since <a href="http://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/october-1-1967-red-sox-complete-impossible-dream">the team’s “Impossible Dream” revival of 1967</a>, which culminated in a seven-game World Series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, the Red Sox had been either competitive or, failing that, respectable. They’d just gotten some bad breaks in the World Series (see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18caPNisP2U">Buckner, Bill</a>), and had suffered from the fact that Major League Baseball has made winning the World Series progressively harder over time, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_postseason#Format_history">adding new layers of playoffs</a> in 1969 and 1994.</p>
<p>The team Epstein took over after the 2002 season had finished second in the American League East with a very strong 93-69 record. Its last losing season had come in 1997, and it hadn’t had a truly terrible season, here defined as losing 90 or more games, since 1966. Conversely, when Epstein took over the Cubs, his new team had lost 91 games <em>that year</em> and had lost more than 90 games five other times since 1997. While the Cubs had gone to the postseason in 2007 and 2008, getting swept out of the first round both years, they’d done so with old teams that had nowhere to go but down. By the time Epstein arrived, the franchise had indeed dropped into the league’s lowest rungs.</p>
<p>Back to Boston: Duquette’s Red Sox teams were run by the Yawkey trust as if they were in a small market, with the GM playing the role of a collector of gewgaws and novelties. For most of Duquette’s tenure, he had two great players in their primes, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra and pitcher Pedro Martinez (whom he had acquired), but he failed to surround them with the supporting cast they deserved. He liked to experiment with minor league sluggers like Rudy Pemberton, Izzy Alcantara, and Morgan Burkhart, all of whom (save perhaps Alcantara, who had, ahem, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2uGROwr-rY">disciplinary problems</a>) might have been finds for a budget-strapped team. To his credit, Duquette did sign slugger Manny Ramirez as a free agent just before handing the team over to Epstein, but the belated gesture didn’t make up for years of noodling with the roster.</p>
<p>The Red Sox’s new ownership quickly did away with those old austerity policies. Although Epstein did make use of the team’s wealth to bolster the pitching staff, it would be both reductive and inaccurate to say that Epstein’s successes stemmed from having a bigger budget than his predecessor. In the long term, Epstein’s Red Sox would become perhaps the best organization in baseball at scouting and nurturing young talent, developing prospect after prospect. In the shorter term, he did what the best general managers do, identifying undervalued commodities and acquiring them.</p>
<p>Epstein made some initial missteps, such as signing Todd Walker, an offense-first second baseman who was never good enough with the bat to outpoint his clanky glove, and Ramiro Mendoza, a valuable swingman with the Yankees who—jokesters liked to say—was still working for his old team when he put on a Red Sox uniform. The hits, though, greatly outnumbered the misses. Kevin Millar was a 31-year-old four-corner utility man who had hit .296/.367/.504 in five years of more or less daily play for the Marlins, but for some reason they were content to let him wander off to Japan’s Chunichi Dragons. When the Red Sox showed belated interest, the Dragons returned Millar to the Marlins, who simply sold him to Boston. The Minnesota Twins had seen David Ortiz hit .266/.348/.461 over six years of trials and injuries. They didn’t like his approach at the plate, preferring singles hitters (the Twins, who in recent decades have disdained power hitters and strikeout pitchers, have a culture of masochism unrivaled in baseball), and they didn’t want to pay him. He was simply released. Epstein signed him. Bill Mueller was easily overlooked because he was a third baseman who hit singles and struggled to stay on the field due to injuries. He also had a .370 career on-base percentage when Epstein signed him as a free agent.</p>
<p>Epstein also dismissed feckless manager Grady Little after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_American_League_Championship_Series#Game_7">a galling Game 7 ALCS loss in 2003</a> and gave a second chance to Terry Francona, who had spent four losing seasons as the young manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. In the three years since he had left Philadelphia, Francona had packed his CV with several broadening experiences, not least of which was a year spent as a bench coach for Beane’s A’s. Epstein was a kindred sabermetric spirit, and Francona was willing to adapt his methods. It wasn’t a coincidence that upon arriving in Boston, Francona essentially forgot his bunt sign.</p>
<p>Epstein also proved willing to make bold moves. On July 31, 2004, he traded Garciaparra, who by that point was a living Red Sox legend. The shortstop, a coming free agent, was beginning to struggle with the injuries that would hinder him over the remainder of his career. The deal brought shortstop Orlando Cabrera, who was in no sense a comparable talent. Epstein, though, had made three perceptive judgments that often elude lesser executives: (1) Today’s championship team can owe no allegiance to the past or it won’t <em>be </em>a champion; (2) The Garciaparra who had won two batting titles no longer existed; and (3) Cabrera wasn’t particularly good, but he could be relied upon simply to <em>be there</em>, something you could no longer say about the incumbent.</p>
<p>It’s hard to overstate just how much criticism Epstein had opened himself to had these judgments proved to be incorrect. In 2004, the Red Sox got some of the breaks they hadn’t received in previous postseasons. Whereas, for example, Jim Rice had to sit out the 1975 World Series with a broken hand, in 2004, Curt Schilling pitched through a torn tendon sheath with the help of a new procedure developed by Boston’s medical staff. <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/98978666/curt-schillings-bloody-sock-the-bridge-to-history/">Schilling’s bloody sock</a> was just the most vivid aspect of an ALCS comeback in which the Red Sox won in seven games despite staking the Yankees a three-games-to-none lead. (After that, the World Series—a 4-0 sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals—was an anti-climax.) That said, to the extent any of this was “lucky,” it was Branch Rickey’s kind of luck, attributable to design rather than happenstance. The ALCS turnaround, for instance, was driven by a huge swing in patience: In the first three games, the Yankees took 14 walks and issued five; over the remaining four, they took 19 but issued 23. And in its extra-inning wins in Games 4 and 5, Boston benefitted from heroic pitching by closer Keith Foulke and home runs off the bat of David Ortiz, both Epstein acquisitions. In short, the manner<em> </em>of victory was Epstein’s, as were the players executing it.</p>
<p>The Cubs required a more radical surgery to get to the World Series. But as with the Red Sox, there were basic flaws in organizational philosophy that, once corrected, would translate immediately to wins. The summer before Epstein brought Bill Mueller to Boston, he had been with the Cubs; they had dealt him to the San Francisco Giants <em>with cash</em> for a nonprospect pitcher. The Cubs replaced him at third base by sliding over their second baseman, Mark Bellhorn. Bellhorn, who had come up with Beane’s A’s, was a switch-hitter with power who worked the pitchers. In 2002, he was in the midst of his best season, hitting .258/.374/.512 with 27 home runs and 76 walks. Bellhorn was not a great defender at any position, he wasn’t fast, and he struck out a lot, but if you cared about the basic alchemy of run production—getting on base and driving runners home—he was someone you could use.</p>
<p>The Cubs didn’t care. The next year, Chicago hired Dusty Baker to manage the team. Baker claimed Bellhorn had been <em>programmed </em>to be selective and he would have to unlearn that, all the while grousing that players who walked a lot only clogged the bases. Clogging the bases is a <em>good </em>thing, but Baker didn’t see it that way. The Cubs traded Bellhorn to the Colorado Rockies, who passed him on to the Red Sox, <a href="http://www.overthemonster.com/2014/10/23/7039491/red-sox-2004-world-series-cardinals-anniversary">where he played a key role</a> on Theo Epstein’s 2004, curse-busting World Series champions.</p>
<p>Disdaining players with high on-base percentages was not just a quirk of Baker’s. It was a core belief of the Cubs franchise. Since the National League went to a 162-game schedule in 1962, just 32 teams have drawn fewer than 400 walks in a nonstrike season. The Cubs joined that list under Baker in 2006 and have come close in 12 other seasons, the most of any team except the Los Angeles Angels (13 seasons) and Pittsburgh Pirates (also 12). This year, the fifth of the Epstein era, the Cubs led the league in walks drawn<em> </em>by a wide margin, besting their own league-leading mark of 2015 by 89 free passes.</p>
<p>The Cubs’ disinterest in on-base percentage is just one symptom of the team’s desultory approach, which dates back first to Philip K. Wrigley, whose initial hire as general manager upon inheriting the team in 1933 was a seafood wholesaler, and then to the Tribune Company, to whom the Cubs were a not-particularly-interesting line on a ledger. As with the Red Sox, ownership slow-walked integration, which put the Cubs behind other teams in terms of collecting talent. Once in the hole, incompetence and those added playoff rounds kept them there. Now competence—aided by dollars from <a href="http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/July-2013/Ricketts-Family/">the Ricketts family</a>, the first owners who seem to care about winning since William Wrigley—has gotten them back out.</p>
<p>This offseason, the Cubs signed the patient Ben Zobrist to a $56 million deal and traded away the impatient Starlin Castro. Since Epstein’s arrival, the team has opened its wallet for free-agent starting pitchers Jon Lester, John Lackey, and Jason Hammel—ownership providing Epstein with the cash to bring in the arms the farm system has so far failed to produce. Epstein has also engineered some brilliant trades, credit for which must also be shared with Hoyer: acquiring first baseman Anthony Rizzo, a former Epstein draft pick with the Red Sox, for pitcher Andrew Cashner and a minor league outfielder; center fielder Dexter Fowler for pitcher Dan Straily and infielder Luis Valbuena; shortstop Addison Russell for pitchers Hammel (who later came back to the Cubs) and Jeff Samardzija; pitcher Kyle Hendricks for the dregs of former All-Star Ryan Dempster’s career; pitchers Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop and cash for pitcher Scott Feldman and journeyman catcher/<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/seattle-mariners-suspend-steve-clevenger-tweets-labeling-black/story?id=42327292">presumed Trump voter</a> Steve Clevenger.</p>
<p>As with the Red Sox, Epstein added a top-flight manager when he could, replacing Rick Renteria with Joe Maddon, and he hasn’t hesitated to trust young players with key roles. The 2004 Red Sox had one home-grown product on the field during the World Series. The World Series–winning 2007 team, also Epstein’s, had eight. The Cubs are on the same trajectory. Drafting and player development are collaborative exercises involving not just the GM, but scouts and scouting directors, and subsequently farm directors and a small army of minor league personnel. A GM’s role here is to set a tone by defining the <em>kind </em>of players the organization prizes and what skills to emphasize in their training. In Boston, stars such as Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia, Jacoby Ellsbury, Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley, and Xander Bogaerts were drafted or signed on the international talent market during Epstein’s tenure. In Chicago, draftees Albert Almora, Kris Bryant, and Kyle Schwarber have already made their way to the majors, and 2015 first-round pick Ian Happ, a second baseman/outfielder, seems likely to do so in the near future. The thing most of these players have in common is that they’re mostly not pitchers. Epstein has been reluctant to bite on touted arms that might never pan out due to injury. Position players are far more projectable. Bryant didn’t have to go through a Tommy John surgery <a href="http://www.si.com/mlb/2016/09/13/kris-bryant-chicago-cubs-nl-mvp-race">before becoming an MVP contender</a>.</p>
<p>Epstein has taken two very difficult jobs and made them look easy. When you add up his accomplishments, you get a lot of common-sense decision-making yoked to a strong perception of who’s valuable and who’s not. He isn’t an innovator like Branch Rickey or Billy Beane; he’s just very, very good at his job. The Red Sox and the Cubs hadn’t had anyone in his class prior to his arrival. When he arrived in Boston and Chicago, he put good players in place and they did the rest. Maybe breaking a curse is just that simple.</p>Tue, 25 Oct 2016 20:08:09 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/theo_epstein_saved_the_red_sox_now_he_s_rescuing_the_cubs_here_s_how.htmlSteven Goldman2016-10-25T20:08:09ZFirst, Theo Epstein saved the Red Sox. Now he’s rescuing the Cubs. Here’s his secret.SportsFirst, Theo Epstein Saved the Red Sox. Now He’s Rescuing the Cubs. Here’s His Secret.100161025012baseballSteven GoldmanSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/theo_epstein_saved_the_red_sox_now_he_s_rescuing_the_cubs_here_s_how.htmlfalsefalsefalseCubs president Theo Epstein isn’t an innovator. He’s just very, very good at his job:He isn’t an innovator. He’s just very, very good at his job.Brad Mangin/MLB Photos via Getty ImagesChicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein before Game 3 of the NLDS against the San Francisco Giants at AT&amp;T Park on Oct. 10, 2016, in San Francisco.Tolstoy Was Still Alive. Jessica Tandy Hadn’t Been Born.http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/the_world_in_1908_the_last_time_the_cubs_won_the_world_series.html
<p><em><a></a>This essay has been adapted from a “Spiel” delivered by Mike Pesca on his podcast, The Gist. An edited transcript of the audio recording is below, and you can listen to Pesca’s Spiel&nbsp;by clicking on the player beneath this paragraph and fast-forwarding to the 17:49 mark.</em></p>
<p>The Chicago Cubs, perhaps you’ve heard, last won the World Series in 1908.<a>*</a> Theodore Roosevelt was president back then.</p>
<p>But that’s sort of the egg avatar of historical insight.&nbsp;Craftier crafters of historical comparison might tell you that Roosevelt was president in 1908, but William Howard Taft—who, in 1910, became the first president to throw a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceremonial_first_pitch">ceremonial first pitch</a>—was about to be elected.&nbsp;Then Roosevelt would go on a safari, come back, decide Taft had ruined things, and say that his one-time prot&eacute;g&eacute; was a “puzzlewit.” <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1912-republican-convention-855607/?no-ist">Taft responded</a> by calling Roosevelt a “honeyfugler.”</p>
<p>Or the cleverer historian might mention that in 1908 the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Ottoman-Empire">Ottoman Empire was still in existence</a>.</p>
<p>Fair enough.&nbsp;But we can do better than that, can’t we?&nbsp;We’ve had 108 years to think of better ways to tell you how long ago 1908 was.&nbsp;Here are some.</p>
<p>Sure, the Ottoman Empire was a thing. But so were the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria-Hungary"> Austro-Hungarian Empire</a> and Central Africa’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadai_Empire">Wadai Empire</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Jabal_Shammar">Emirate of Jabal Shammar</a> on the Arabian Peninsula.&nbsp;There were only about 60 countries in the entire world in 1908—60 places you might consider sending an ambassador if you were Washington. That doesn’t even count <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_(island)">Newfoundland</a>, which was a quasi-independent dominion of Great Britain, independent from Canada. There are now 192 countries in the United Nations. States proliferate easier than Cubs championships.</p>
<p>Forget countries—<a href="http://environmentalchemistry.com/yogi/periodic/year.html">there were 85 known&nbsp;elements in 1908</a>.&nbsp;Today there are 118 elements in the periodic table.&nbsp;To be fair, elements 95 through 118 literally didn’t exist in 1908—they were created in laboratories. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Rutherford-atomic-model">The atomic model</a> was devised by Rutherford only in 1911.</p>
<p>In 1908, the vast majority of Americans thought the Earth’s years numbered in the thousands. Just a few years prior, scientists suspected it may be the millions. But in 1907, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Boltwood">Bertram Borden Boltwood</a> used <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do07ra.html">the half-life of uranium</a> to place the Earth’s age at around 2.2 billion. He was off by about half—Earth is actually 4.5 billion years old, which means it even predates the Roosevelt presidency.</p>
<p>Scientifically, 1908 does have something in common with the present.&nbsp;There were only eight planets in 1908, and there are only eight planets now.&nbsp;Let us not speak of that benighted period, from the discovery of <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-pluto-k4.html">Pluto</a> in 1930 until its <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060824-pluto-planet.html">reclassification as a dwarf in 2006</a>, when we mistakenly thought we had nine.</p>
<p>In 1908, there were <a href="https://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/popclockest.txt">88.7 million people</a> in the United States, and more of them died of tuberculosis—around 67,000—than any other disease. <a href="http://u.demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html">The average age barely touched 50</a>.&nbsp;This led to a strange and sad quirk in mortality statistics.&nbsp;The Bureau of the Census reported that <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsushistorical/mortstatbl_1908.pdf">nearly 700,000 Americans died</a>in 1908. Infants under the age of 1 accounted for 136,000 of those—roughly 20 percent of all deaths. If you had a family member die in 1908, it was more likely he or she was under the age of 1 than over the age of 70. Other causes of death in 1908: diarrhea and enteritis (52,000), typhoid (11,000), whooping cough (5,000), measles (4,600), diphtheria (1,500), abscess (514), carbuncle (203).</p>
<p>Sixty-six deaths of Americans in 1908 were officially listed as “suicide by crushing.” There were 2,468 suicides by firearms. <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm">Now it’s roughly 21,000</a>, which means more Americans per capita take their own lives by firearm today than they did in 1908, even though conditions were demonstrably worse 108 years ago.&nbsp;We have Netflix; they had death by carbuncle. To be fair, I would say that the stigma around suicide has lessened and that government statistics have gotten more reliable, so maybe it’s not true that we have, on a per capita basis, outstripped our forefathers. On the other hand, we should also realize that guns have gotten more efficient, which is to say more deadly, so maybe there were actually more suicide attempts back then.</p>
<p>Some good news: Only 393 Americans lost their lives in car accidents in 1908. Why? There were almost no cars—<a href="http://www.history.com/topics/model-t">the Model T began production in 1908</a>. In addition, 1,696 people died by streetcar.</p>
<p>Because of inflation, a nickel then was like a dollar now. Let’s put this another way. A Seattle resident earning today’s minimum wage of $15 an hour and working 40 hours per week would have the spending power—if that was his wage back in 1908—of <a href="http://www.in2013dollars.com/1908-dollars-in-2016?amount=31200">someone earning $750,000 in today’s money</a>. Another way to put it: You would be <a href="http://www.spotrac.com/mlb/chicago-cubs/payroll/">earning more than the Chicago Cubs’</a> Kyle Hendricks, Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, or Addison Russell do today.&nbsp;Three-quarters of the current Cubs infield would cost you $64,000 in 1908.<strong>&nbsp;</strong>In 2016 money, Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw earned roughly $72,000&nbsp;for each out he recorded&nbsp;in the regular season.</p>
<p>Speaking of the Cubs: The 1908 Cubs were decidedly uncursed. The World Series only started in 1903. It was won by the Boston Americans, who would later become the Red Sox. In 1904, there was no World Series. Then the New York Giants and the Chicago White Sox won it in 1905 and 1906 before the Cubs took the series for two straight years.</p>
<p>Think about that: The World Series was won by Chicago teams three times in the first five years it was contested and twice in the next 107 years—results of the current year still pending.</p>
<p>In 1908, classical music was just known as music. Stravinsky’s <em>The Firebird</em> had not yet been composed, and Mahler’s eighth symphony had <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Mahler)#Premiere">yet to premiere</a>. Mahler, Ravel, Debussy, and Prokofiev had all yet to write some of their most famous works. In other music news, the Cubs could have heard “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” <a href="http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/po_stmo.shtml">because that was written in 1908</a>. Although no one would have heard “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at the ballgame because it wasn’t played at ballgames until 1934.</p>
<p>The tallest building in Chicago in 1908 <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2472.html">was 19 stories</a>.</p>
<p>The following people still walked the Earth in 1908: Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Florence Nightingale, Henri Rousseau, Julia Ward Howe, Geronimo.</p>
<p>The following people, people who we know today as people who were old when they died, in some cases many years ago, had not even been born in 1908: Eva Braun, Perry Como, Errol Flynn, Eudora Welty, Mother Teresa, Jacques Cousteau, Howlin’ Wolf. Jessica Tandy was famous as an old lady when <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0607.html">she died 22 years ago</a>. She had not been born in 1908.</p>
<p>An&nbsp;American in 1908 of the same age that I am right now, 44, could have been born as the legally recognized property of another American.</p>
<p><a></a>1908 was closer in time to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson than it is to the presidency of Hillary Clinton, though both years are equally distant to the presidency of Donald Trump, because that is an event that will never come.&nbsp;Although, for many years, people though the same thing about the Cubs winning the World Series.</p>
<p><em><strong>Correction, Oct. 25, 2016: </strong>This article originally stated that the Chicago Cubs last made the World Series in 1908. They last won the World Series in 1908. (<a>Return</a>.)</em></p>Tue, 25 Oct 2016 15:09:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/the_world_in_1908_the_last_time_the_cubs_won_the_world_series.htmlMike Pesca2016-10-25T15:09:00ZThe state of the world in 1908, the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.SportsThe Last Time the Cubs Won the World Series, Tolstoy and Mark Twain Were Still Alive100161025003sportsbaseballMike PescaSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/the_world_in_1908_the_last_time_the_cubs_won_the_world_series.htmlfalsefalsefalseThe last time the Cubs won the World Series, Tolstoy and Mark Twain were still alive:Also alive: Florence Nightingale, Henri Rousseau, Julia Ward Howe, Geronimo.Chicago History Museum/Getty ImagesThe Chicago Cubs at West Side Grounds in 1908.Cubs Win!http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/how_cubs_fans_became_a_bunch_of_optimists.html
<p>After <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-wrigley-beer-slinger-kogan-sidewalks-20160824-column.html">17 years as a vendor at Wrigley Field</a>, I’ve figured out how to launch conversations with a stadium’s worth of potential beer drinkers. A couple of years ago, I came up with a line that always killed. “I’m doing great,” I’d say in the first inning or so. “It’s summer, I’m at the ballpark, and the Cubs aren’t losing yet.”</p>
<p>I haven’t used that line a single time this year.</p>
<p>Last Saturday night, in the eighth inning of the first game of the National League Championship Series, the Chicago Cubs’ flame-throwing closer Aroldis Chapman gave up a two-run, game-tying single to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Adrian Gonzalez. A few seconds later, I got a text message from a friend. She wanted to know if the Cubs were about to blow this. “Oh, we’ll beat them. Eventually,” I replied. Sure enough, in the bottom half of the inning, catcher <a href="http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2016/10/16/206250864/bad-pinch-hitter-miguel-montero-hit-a-huge-pinch-hit-grand-slam-in-the-nlcs">Miguel Montero hit a pinch-hit grand slam</a>. Cubs win!</p>
<p>It has been a very weird October at Wrigley for many reasons, among which are these:</p>
<ol>
<li>The Cubs are in the League Championship Series for only the fifth time since the LCS came into existence.</li>
<li>Cubs fans actually think they will win.</li>
</ol>
<p>In all the hours I’ve spent making the rounds during the regular season and the playoffs, I’ve heard no talk of curses or choking, no gloomy references to previous letdowns. The only patrons who’ve sounded defeatist have been the opposing team’s fans who, when pressed, will confess that they expect their team to lose to the juggernaut that plays its home games on the North Side of Chicago. In the vendors’ area before Game 2 of the NLCS, the union steward polled us on our availability if the series returned to Chicago for a potential Game 6 and Game 7. He prefaced this question by saying, “To be clear, I don’t think the series is coming back. Cubs in five.”</p>
<p>He was wrong. The series <em>is</em> coming back to Chicago on Saturday, and the Dodgers have been a respectable opponent. After winning Game 1, the Cubs were shut out in consecutive games by three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw and local man Rich Hill. But their bats came alive in Games 4 and 5, both blowout wins. While there’s no guarantee the Cubs will win on Saturday, given that Kershaw is starting for the Dodgers, it <em>feels</em> like they’re going to win. The Cubs fans I know are going into this weekend feeling excited about a likely World Series berth, not watching through tented fingers in anticipation of the latest Cubs screw-up.</p>
<p><strong><em>Read more</em></strong><em>: <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/hang_up_and_listen/2016/10/slate_s_hang_up_and_listen_talks_with_beer_vendor_justin_peters_about_the.html">What’s It Like Selling Beer at Wrigley Field During the Playoffs?</a></em></p>
<p>This optimism has been honestly acquired. The 2016 Cubs were the best team in baseball by a wide margin. Their 103 wins were the most in the majors, and the most wins by a Cubs team since 1910. This wasn’t a fluke 103-win season, either. The 2016 Cubs have <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/17738547/the-cubs-historically-excellent-defense">the best defense in baseball</a>, the best ERA in the majors, and the best OPS+ in the National League. Three of their starting pitchers will likely earn NL Cy Young votes. Third baseman/outfielder Kris Bryant is favored to win the NL MVP. They are led by arguably <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/13186480/who-mlb-best-manager-survey-says">the game’s best manager</a>.</p>
<p>None of that makes the Cubs a lock to win the World Series. Baseball is a fickle game. MVPs strike out. Star pitchers get hurt. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Bartman_incident">Fans reach into the field of play to grab foul balls</a>. But the Cubs will win because this team is not a one-hit wonder. The roster is young and stacked, and team president Theo Epstein is the smartest executive in baseball. The Cubs could lose to the Dodgers in the LCS or to the Indians in the World Series. If they do, I have a hard time imagining they won’t win it all in 2017, 2018, or 2019. This is the only year I can remember at Wrigley in which “We’ll get ‘em next year” feels less like an empty promise than an inevitability.</p>
<p>Cubs fans and optimism have traditionally gone together like <a href="http://oldstylebeer.com/">Old Style beer</a> and taste buds. That’s understandable given that the franchise hasn’t appeared in the World Series since 1945 and hasn’t won a title since 1908. “Curses” have nothing to do with the team’s futility. The sad truth is the Cubs have just been bad at baseball. In the last 72 seasons, the team has finished in first place seven times, in last place 16 times, and in second-to-last place 18 times. Though the Steve Goodman song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtyOq-SU0Ec">Go Cubs Go</a>“ has lately become the team’s official anthem, Goodman actually wrote a better Cubs song called “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xBxZGQ1dJk">A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request</a>,” one in which he repeatedly calls them “the doormat of the National League” and suggests death is preferable to watching the Cubs crush their fans’ hopes “year after year after year after year after year after year after year after year.” Though Cubs fans always want their team to win, they assume they’ll somehow find a way to lose.</p>
<p>This fatalism was validated in 2003, the last time Cubs fans felt as sanguine as they do today. That year, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_National_League_Championship_Series">the Cubs charged to a 3–1 lead in the NLCS</a>. A berth in the World Series seemed inevitable, with young pitchers Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, and Carlos Zambrano leading the Cubs to glory. And then: a boneheaded fan-interference incident and a booted groundball in Game 6, and Wood crumbling under pressure in Game 7, possibly thanks to overuse in the regular season. The Florida Marlins moved on. The Cubs went home. Since then, I have refused to let myself get excited over any baseball thing. Not when they made the playoffs in 2007 and 2008. Not when they got back to the postseason last year. But this season feels different. This season <em>is</em> different.</p>
<p>All throughout the playoffs, I’ve been selling beer in the left-field box seats, and I’ll occasionally make it down to the section where notorious ball-grabber Steve Bartman sat in 2003. Normally, this would serve as a reminder that, when it comes to Cubs baseball, heartbreaking failure is always just a couple of seats away. Many fans treat that section with trepidation—a “hold your breath as you pass the graveyard” sort of thing. But Bartman’s name has hardly been invoked at all this October. If he suddenly appeared back in Section 4, Cubs hat on and headphones wrapped around his ears, I bet the fans around him would buy him drinks. (Hopefully they’d buy them from me, because I need the money.)</p>
<p>I won’t be at Wrigley this weekend, but if the Cubs do make it to their first World Series since 1945, I will be there. I’ve already got my opening lines ready. “I’m doing great,” I’ll say. “It’s October, and the Cubs are in the <em>World</em>. <em>Series</em>.” And then I’m gonna pause, lower my voice, and lean in toward the customer as I finish the pour. “And you know what?” I’ll say. “We’re going to win.”</p>Fri, 21 Oct 2016 16:22:07 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/how_cubs_fans_became_a_bunch_of_optimists.htmlJustin Peters2016-10-21T16:22:07ZHow the most pessimistic fans in sports transformed into a bunch of optimists.SportsI Always Think the Cubs Are Going to Lose. I Know They’re Going to Win the World Series.100161021010sportsbaseballJustin PetersSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/how_cubs_fans_became_a_bunch_of_optimists.htmlfalsefalsefalseI always think the Cubs will lose. I know they’re going to win the World Series:How the most pessimistic fans in sports transformed into a bunch of optimists.Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesMiguel Montero of the Chicago Cubs celebrates after hitting a grand slam n the eighth inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers during Game 1 of the NLCS on Saturday.Mickey Mantle Is Alive, and He Plays in Anaheimhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/why_doesn_t_anyone_care_about_mike_trout.html
<p>Mickey Mantle is alive. He’s right out there in centerfield, every day, running down balls in the alleys, taking over games with his offense, defense, and speed. And this is prime Mantle, too—not later-years, shot-kneed, wee-hours-at-the-Copacabana Mantle. He debuted at 19, just turned 25, and he’s been the best player in baseball every year since he—</p>
<p>Sorry, hang on, it’s not Mickey Mantle. It’s Hank Aaron. You can tell by his balanced stance and that rare blend of power and patience—nope, sorry, I’m wrong again. It’s Ken Griffey Jr. No, it’s Willie Mays? It’s definitely one of those legends. Because I’m watching him play, and I’m looking at his numbers, and any player this good, at every aspect of baseball, must be very, very, famous. Right?</p>
<p>It’s hard to quantify how unfamous someone is, but let’s try. What do you know about Mike Trout? He plays baseball. He … is great. That’s probably it, for most people. If you’re a baseball fan, you might know that he won an MVP a couple years ago or even that he has finished second every other year he’s played. You might even know some of his statistics, which for a diehard fan border on pornography and which after only five years in the league could be used to make a legitimate argument that Trout should be in the Hall of Fame. If you are an opposing pitcher, you know that Trout is the very last person you want to see at the plate, because of the sheer number of ways he can humiliate you and your team. And if you are <a href="http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v23618697/laa-cws-trout-robs-beckham-with-spectacular-catch">Gordon Beckham</a>, or <a href="http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v504480983/sea-laa-trout-has-97-route-efficiency-in-great-grab">Jesus Montero</a>, or <a href="http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/0/v22643503/laa-bal-trout-takes-a-homer-away-from-hardy">J.J. Hardy</a>, or any of about a dozen other players who have watched Trout make impossible running-leaping-stretching catches at the wall to rob you of a home run, you know he is an impossible RoboCop monster who has taken notches off your stat sheet and food off your table.</p>
<p>Trout is not anonymous. His jersey regularly ranks in the top five or 10 in Major League Baseball sales, for one thing, and anyone who follows baseball at all knows who he is. But based on the unprecedentedly incredible things <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/troutmi01.shtml">he has already done</a>, by age 25, in the game purporting to be America’s national pastime, he should be <em>far more</em> famous. Wherever you fell on the Trout knowledge spectrum, you probably know way more about Peyton Manning. You know what Peyton Manning looks and sounds like and what his favorite kind of pizza is and probably what insurance company he uses. (If you don’t, sing the seven-note jingle in your head—yes, that one—and it’ll come to you.) You probably know what Steph Curry looks and sounds like and that he has a cute, funny daughter, and you might even know <em>her</em> name. You know exactly what Michael Phelps looks like, and he’s a <em>swimmer</em>—he only emerges every four years, for one week, like a minor comet or a lazy groundhog or something, and yet you know him. But what do you know about Mike Trout—a man every bit as good at baseball as Manning was at football and Curry is at basketball. Do you know what he looks like? Sounds like? Endorses? Anything? Do you know if he’s playing in the playoffs, which began Tuesday? Did you even know the playoffs began Tuesday?</p>
<p>Here is what you should know: Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. There’s an argument to be made that he’s had the greatest season ever, for a player his age, in every year he has played. If he stays healthy, he may well end up being the greatest all-around baseball player of all time. So why does it feel like no one cares?</p>
<p><strong>Because: Anaheim?</strong></p>
<p>Baseball stardom has something of an East Coast bias. It’s less pronounced in basketball, and not true at all in football, where the once-a-week games are all played at regulated, TV-friendly times. But in baseball, a nightly occurrence for six months, having your games start when half the country is getting ready for bed doesn’t help your chances of crossing over. It’s not impossible—Ichiro Suzuki and Ken Griffey Jr. played in Seattle. But Anaheim is not Seattle. Anaheim is the white-hot center of Southern California: a vague, endless landscape of freeways, subdivisions, and <em>Truman Show</em> sameness.</p>
<p>Driving in Southern California is crazy-making. Any journey, of any length, makes you feel as if you’re in the Flintstones car, crawling along past the same 2-D palm trees, the same construction sites, the same strip malls, over and over. A 40-mile journey from Los Angeles to Anaheim—just as one random example I can think of, off the top of my head—can take you two hours or more, during which you first catalog all of the other, better things you could have done with that time, and then calculate how much faster you might’ve gotten there if you’d literally taken a bicycle.</p>
<p>And Anaheim itself feels accidental—there doesn’t appear to be a reason for it to be where it is. You just drive for a while and then pull off the highway, seemingly randomly, and there’s Disneyland and over there’s where the Angels play, and that’s Anaheim. And it’s hot. It’s so hot, always, all the time. Former FOX and ABC Sports reporter Suzy Shuster Eisen, who covered the Angels for three years, put it this way: “The only good part of driving to Anaheim is the In-N-Out just before you reach the stadium.”</p>
<p>The Angels won the World Series in 2002—the franchise’s first and only—and for a while it seemed that new owner Arte Moreno might just wrest control of Los Angeles baseball away from the Dodgers. Moreno went so far as to try to rename the team the Los Angeles Angels—“The The Angels Angels,” for you non–Spanish speakers—but a clause in his stadium lease mandated the word “Anaheim” had to be a part of the team name. So Moreno did the only logical thing—he renamed the team The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, a strong contender for worst franchise name ever, along with the Utah Jazz and the Mighty Ducks, also of Anaheim.</p>
<p>Although attendance surged, and the team won several division titles in the mid-’00s, the franchise has never quite recaptured that 2002 glory, and they’ve made the playoffs only once in the past seven years. (The Dodgers, after muddling through their own ownership drama, have four straight National League West crowns and are now firmly back in control of the city and its fans.) There is no question that performing in the postseason, in any sport, helps with countrywide popularity, and Mike Trout hasn’t really gotten the chance to do that yet. (Tellingly, all of the other top jersey sellers in 2016 are from <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2651530-david-ortiz-kris-bryant-lead-mlb-jersey-sales-at-all-star-break-of-2016-season#)">teams that made the playoffs this season</a>.)</p>
<p>So here’s Mike Trout, his generation’s best player, sitting in his clubhouse before a meaningless final weekend game against the Houston Astros. He is impossibly solid-looking but doesn’t make a very big footprint in the room—he’s like a super–laid-back Captain America.&nbsp; His job tonight is the same as it has been since his first game, five years ago: to man the outfield for a mediocre team, playing in the SoCal heat, in front of SoCal fans. Technically, tonight he will be the team’s designated hitter, because the game is <em>so</em> meaningless, there’s really no sense having him run around and put more mileage on his knees. But he <em>has </em>to play, because watching Mike Trout is one of a very few good reasons the Anaheim Angels can give their fans to get them to buy tickets.</p>
<p>The clich&eacute; about Southern California fans is fairly accurate—they have a penchant for meandering in late and leaving early, to beat the traffic. Trout, a New Jersey native who rooted for the Phillies, shrugs off the “fan intensity” gap between the Northeast and SoCal. “I don’t know that it’s that different, really. You want to have the stadium filled, for sure.” And to be fair, The The Angels Angels do just fine in that regard—they drew 3 million fans this year, to that hot stadium in the middle of nowhere and 3 million last year and the year before that. So at least Trout is appreciated locally. But something is muting his potential fame, and that thing may be the neither-here-nor-there city in which he plays. Eisen, for one, would agree. “There’s only room for one star in Anaheim,” she says, “and it’s Mickey Mouse.”</p>
<p><strong>Because: How He Lives?</strong></p>
<p>The famous story goes like this: The Yankees’ star centerfielder is hungover, again, so he’s sitting this one out. Coach sends him to pinch-hit, so he struggles to the plate, head throbbing, and somehow hits one out to win the game. He rounds the bases, wincing at the loud cheers, and as Mickey Mantle gets back to the dugout he looks to his teammates and says, “Boys, you’ll never know how hard that was.”</p>
<p>Mantle’s fame was part talent, part New York, part Yankees, and part wild-man night-owl personality—he also famously said, toward the end of his life, “If I’d’ve known I was gonna live this long, I would’ve taken better care of myself.” Doubtful Mike Trout will feel the same, decades from now. There are no famous stories about wild behavior, no crazy nights at whatever the 2016 equivalent of the Copacabana is. Trout’s main off-field passion seems to be … the weather. He loves weather and weather reports, even <a href="http://screengrabber.deadspin.com/weather-geek-mike-trout-joins-jim-cantore-to-report-on-1754703823">appearing on the Weather Channel</a> a few times, to guest-announce the weather. That’s right. His true passion is the thing we all talk about to fill awkward silences on elevators.</p>
<p>Despite having grown up a Phillies fan, Trout most idolized a guy who played elsewhere. <strong>“</strong>Jeter was my guy. I was a shortstop … and they always aired the Yankees on ESPN. I just liked the way he played, the way he carried himself.” There’s a logic to this—Derek Jeter had the same private vibe, even when out in public. He stayed outside of the limelight, as much as a superstar in New York can. His play, and the Yankees, and the tireless work of his many hagiographers, made him famous.</p>
<p>So Trout is not Mickey Mantle. He’s not Bryce Harper, either, with his bro-y fauxhawk and calls to make the game more fun and calling out reporters for their clown questions. Trout is not cartoonishly Popeye-ish, like Mark McGwire. He doesn’t get into Twitter fights like Curt Schilling. He limits his media exposure and his endorsements. He doesn’t do anything—for better or worse—that would propel his stardom to the next level. As he puts it: “That’s just kind of how it’s been. I’m one of those guys who likes to keep stuff to themselves. People ask me questions, I answer.” However, many athletes at his level become stars simply by playing as well as he plays. Personality helps, but extreme greatness itself can beget fame, even if the person inside the personality isn’t larger than life. (If you don’t believe me, listen to Michael Jordan <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4B8owXm0Co">trying to record one simple line for a Gatorade ad</a>. The guy wasn’t exactly a dynamo off the court.)</p>
<p>All of these things—playing on the West Coast, playing in Anaheim specifically, limiting his exposure, loving weather a lot—might help explain why the best baseball player ever, through his age-24 season, is roughly as famous, right now, in America, as <a href="http://www.espn.com/nfl/player/_/id/16760/jimmy-garoppolo">Jimmy Garoppolo</a>. But it doesn’t <em>completely </em>explain it.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the game of baseball itself.</p>
<p><strong>Because: Mike Trout Plays Baseball?</strong></p>
<p>Stats on baseball’s popularity are a little Rorschach-y—if you’re Commissioner Rob Manfred, you can stare at them and see <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2015/10/06/mlb-sees-nearly-73-8-million-in-attendance-for-2015-seventh-highest-all-time/#24b7300ab8b9">healthy attendance figures</a> fueled by new stadiums and greater parity, billions in revenue, and record-shattering TV rights deals for local markets. But the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Series_television_ratings">World Series TV ratings</a> paint a different picture—one where a crummy, meaningless <em>Monday Night Football</em> game in Week 5 of the NFL season can tie or beat the Fall Classic. Baseball’s biggest moments don’t hold the nation’s attention the way they used to. It may technically be <a href="http://www.theharrispoll.com/sports/Americas_Fav_Sport_2016.html">a top-two or -three sport in the U.S.</a>, but there are so many games, over such a long period of time, it maybe just doesn’t feel <em>special</em>, or something.</p>
<p>This, for what it’s worth, is Trout’s theory on baseball’s struggle to win over casual fans: “There are so many games. [Many] people start watching in September. In those mid-summer months, there’s not a lot of people watching, because there’s 162 games.”<strong></strong></p>
<p>And those who do think it’s special are old and getting older. The median age of those baseball-first fans is climbing. Stars are made by kids, and kids don’t watch baseball the way they used to. And even if they do, there’s the essential problem of the actual game they’re watching: It’s very weird. It may in fact be the weirdest sport we have.</p>
<p>It’s not the most boring sport, as haterz are fond of claiming; <a href="http://www.nationalsarmrace.com/?p=475">there’s more ball-in-play action in baseball</a> than there is in football (though obviously far less than in soccer or basketball). But it is weirder. It’s a team game, made up of one-on-one battles, in which players can go an eternity without touching the ball. More importantly, on TV, only the pitcher and batter are really visible. Even if you want to learn more about Mike Trout, you can watch an Angels game (at 10 p.m. on the East Coast) for 40 minutes and never once even <em>see</em> the best player in baseball. If at any given moment Steph Curry isn’t touching the basketball, he is at least running around and his teammates are trying to get it to him. He is always <em>in</em> the game.</p>
<p>And if baseball the game is bad for star-making, the meta-game—the way it packages and presents itself to fans—is even worse. At the most boring regular season NBA game—I’m talking Suns-76ers in early January—the lineups of the home team will be announced during a 4-D holographic laser–video–light show that could make Nik Stauskas look like Dr. J. Baseball has a public address system and a gameday program you can buy with a tiny golf pencil to keep score. MLB has yet to figure out how to market its best stars, on a day-to-day basis. Maybe because there are just too many players and too many games that last too long, in a too-long season over too many months.</p>
<p>MLB is not blind to its problems. It recently introduced several rules to trim some precious minutes off its nightly running time, which appear to be working and which Trout applauds: “It’s tough to be out there, three, four hours a day. They’re speeding it up to an extent, but it still has to be baseball. From a fan standpoint, the fans leave in the sixth, seventh inning because it’s a long game. As a player it’s worse—you’re beat by the seventh, eighth inning.” But the game, really, is the game: It’s plodding and gradual and deliberate. No matter what happens on the margins, it still has to be baseball. It will never have the constant action of basketball or the explosiveness of football, and as such its stars may simply never truly break through to the extent that NFL and NBA stars do.</p>
<p>Which maybe brings us all the way back around to Anaheim, in a way, and the 3 million fans who fill that hot stadium every year. Baseball, thanks to its everyday schedule, lends itself extremely well to local-market television. Franchises have unlocked massive value by either selling broadcasting rights to local sports networks (FOXSportsThisPlace, FOXSportsThatPlace) or by outright owning them (YES for the Yankees, NESN for the Red Sox). But that Balkanization has led to a sort of fan provinciality—when you have the ability to watch only your team, you end up not watching any others, really. The NBA has its Christmas Day spectacular. The NFL has a weekly national doubleheader, plus Monday and Thursday nights. The MLB has 30 sets of fans living in 30 happy bubbles. Which means Mike Trout is a very big deal in Anaheim, and a silent tree falling in Anaheim, nightly, everywhere else.</p>
<p>This is how you explain the Rorschach-iness of baseball’s robust fan data—it’s a confederacy of fan bases, many of them individually healthy but without the centralized national pillars of support enjoyed by other sports. And in one remote part of that confederacy, we find Mike Trout, who does every exciting thing you can do on a baseball field and does them better than anyone else, and it feels as if it doesn’t matter. For whatever reason, baseball is local, and so are its stars. He is Mickey Mantle, minus New York, minus the Yankees, minus the wild side, plus Anaheim, plus the weather, and minus most of the fame.</p>Wed, 05 Oct 2016 20:17:45 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/why_doesn_t_anyone_care_about_mike_trout.htmlMike Schur2016-10-05T20:17:45ZSo why is Mike Trout less famous than Jimmy Garoppolo?SportsWhy Doesn’t Anyone Care About the Best Player in Baseball?100161005016baseballMike SchurSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/why_doesn_t_anyone_care_about_mike_trout.htmlfalsefalsefalseMickey Mantle is alive, he plays in Anaheim, and no one cares.Why doesn’t anyone care about the best player in baseball?Matt Brown/Angels Baseball LP/Getty ImagesMike Trout’s arguably had the greatest season ever, for a player his age, in every year he has played. Above, Trout at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, Sept. 15.In Praise of Baseball’s One-Game Playoffhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/in_praise_of_baseball_s_one_game_playoff.html
<p>A one-game baseball playoff is an unnatural thing. Teams are built around a five-game cycle, and the best of them still lose 1 in 3 games. This year’s Chicago Cubs—the best team in baseball—won just 64 percent of their games. After a six-month season, a nine-inning trial feels as disjointed from the flow of baseball as a penalty shootout is from the rhythms of soccer. It’s an abbreviated finale that also rewards a slightly different set of skills.</p>
<p>But somehow, Major League Baseball’s one-game wild-card playoff works. Unlike soccer’s penalty shootout, the playoff amplifies baseball’s strategy, tension, and charm. If you have friends who think baseball is boring (and who doesn’t?), friends who don’t care for the wasted 0–2 pitch in the dirt, the lefty-lefty matchup, the shift—these are two games that will convince them otherwise.</p>
<p>The fifth edition of MLB’s new wild-card format starts on Tuesday night with a do-or-die game between Baltimore and Toronto. Expect a significant portion of Canada to be watching as the O’s visit the Rogers Centre. On Wednesday, the San Francisco Giants–winners of the World Series in 2010, 2012, and 2014—will drop in on the reigning National League champion Mets in Queens, New York.</p>
<p>The single-game playoff, which debuted in 2012, was an overdue correction to the problems created by the original wild-card format in 1994, under which three division winners plus one wild-card team made the playoffs in each league. By pitting wild-card teams against each other, the new format cleans up some of the bad incentives of the old regime. It gives regular-season front-runners a reason to stay out in front, lest they fall into a single-elimination game, and it gives middling teams a reason not to give up on their seasons, because the second wild card is available. (After getting the second wild-card berth in 2014, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series.) Each wild-card–playoff winner progresses to a best-of-five against its league’s best team.</p>
<p>I went to one of these games last year, in the Bronx, where the Yankees hosted the Houston Astros. The Yanks had bobbled away an improbable midsummer division lead to the superior Blue Jays and been relegated to hosting a young Astros team for one game at Yankee Stadium. The home team played terribly, helplessly, managing just three hits and no runs.</p>
<p>What I remember, though, was how the crowd—even in that airy new stadium, where the ushers come to your seat to check your ticket as if they were conductors on an Amtrak train—was riveted by the game’s minutiae. I never saw Yankee Stadium stand up for a one-out, seventh-inning walk before. But that night, we were rapt. Even the inevitable eighth-inning boos for Brett Gardner’s three-strikeout, 0-for-4 performance were delivered with gusto, not surly resignation.</p>
<p>This was baseball at high stakes, and each pitch was endowed with a kind of electric desperation that the sport, in which there is always one more game, too often lacks.</p>
<p>Given the small sample size, we shouldn’t make too much of the past games. (That the away team is 6–2, for example, seems like a fluke.) I also wouldn’t place too much stock in the fact that the games haven’t been so competitive. Aside from a slugfest between Oakland and Kansas City in 2014, which finished 9–8 in 12 innings and featured six lead changes, in only one of the seven games (when the Cards won in Atlanta in 2012) did the losing team ever hold the lead.</p>
<p>What does make sense is that the games have been low-scoring, and four of them have been shutouts. Teams start their best pitchers. Wednesday’s matchup between the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard and the Giants’ Madison Bumgarner has the makings of a taut pitcher’s duel.</p>
<p>I know fans don’t think they want to see games where the positioning of the outfielders is what passes for action. Certainly, the one-game format, with a day off before and after, is conducive to the kind of finicky bullpen management that can drown a tense inning in commercial breaks. But a sudden-death game does spotlight the aspects of baseball—a long at-bat, say, or a hit-and-run—that fans quietly savor during the summer. Those little stratagems can seem silly and unnecessary on an August afternoon; in a one-game playoff, their importance is obvious.&nbsp;Those, more than the home runs, are the facets of the game that turn casual fans into scorekeeping aficionados.</p>
<p>There’s a big-picture reason to like the games, too.&nbsp;Even with the one-game wild card, baseball lets fewer teams progress to the playoffs than football, basketball, or hockey. The league sacrifices little in quality to include one more team. And if this game does represent a perversion of the sport’s meandering pace, it is not so different from what’s presented by the five- and seven-game series that follow, with their shortened rotations and frequent off-days. The wild-card game does not exist in isolation: Those Astros may have beaten my Yankees, but by starting their ace Dallas Keuchel in the Bronx, they were able to use him only once in the subsequent five-game series against Kansas City, which they lost.</p>
<p>That America doesn’t tune in for five- and seven-game baseball playoff series is an issue for another day. (Thursday, to be exact, when the AL Division Series starts.) For now, baseball fans should relish that these one-game playoffs routinely draw a bigger television audience than their division series counterparts. The Cubs-Pirates game last year was the <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/ct-cubs-pirates-ratings-20151008-story.html">highest-rated broadcast</a> on TBS in five years. The Yankees-Astros game was the <a href="https://sportstvratings.com/yankees-astros-delivers-record-mlb-wild-card-overnight-tv-ratings/">most-watched baseball game</a> on ESPN since 2003. And neither of those was even a <em>good </em>game, the kind of game where I’d text my dad and ask simply: Are you watching this?</p>
<p>What they have is simply the suspense of a whole year of play turning on one night. Whatever they lack as an appropriate conclusion to the summer circuit, they make up for as a thrilling start to the postseason.</p>Tue, 04 Oct 2016 21:58:50 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/in_praise_of_baseball_s_one_game_playoff.htmlHenry Grabar2016-10-04T21:58:50ZThe traditionalists are wrong.SportsHow the One-Game Playoff Saved the Baseball Postseason100161004018baseballmajor league baseballHenry GrabarSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/10/in_praise_of_baseball_s_one_game_playoff.htmlfalsefalsefalseHow the one-game playoff saved the baseball postseason:If you have friends who think baseball is boring, these are two games that will convince them otherwise.Jim McIsaac/Getty ImagesJonathan Villar of the Houston Astros steals against Didi Gregorius of the New York Yankees during the American League Wild-Card game on Oct. 6, 2015, in New York City.Jos&eacute; Fern&aacute;ndez Was the Future of Baseballhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/marlins_pitcher_jose_fernandez_was_the_future_of_baseball.html
<p>Jos&eacute; Fern&aacute;ndez, the 24-year-old Miami Marlins pitcher who <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/09/25/jose_fernandez_of_miami_marlins_dies_in_boating_accident_at_age_24.html">died this weekend in a boating accident</a> off the coast of Florida, was imprisoned in Cuba as a teenager for trying to escape the island. He finally managed to defect at age 15, but only after <a href="http://grantland.com/features/marlins-rookie-pitcher-jose-fernandez-journey-cuban-defector-mlb-all-star/">saving his mother Maritza from drowning</a>. Just five years later, he won the 2013 National League Rookie of the Year Award and finished third in the voting for the Cy Young.</p>
<p>Though he started only 76 games in his career, Fern&aacute;ndez had the potential to be a Hall of Famer. This season, just his second full one in the big leagues—he missed parts of 2014 and 2015 due to a torn elbow ligament and his subsequent recovery from Tommy John surgery—he averaged an incredible 12.5 strikeouts per 9 innings, <a href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/strikeouts_per_nine_season.shtml">the fifth-best mark in history for a starting pitcher</a>. But Fern&aacute;ndez also had the potential to change a sport that desperately needs changing. The Marlins starter loved the competition and camaraderie of baseball, and he loved striking fools out. From the moment he made his debut for the Marlins, he ignored the fusty expectation that players—often young, Latino players—dial back their exuberance lest they annoy their tight-assed opponents. At age 24, he’d already started to modernize the game’s old-fashioned codes and what it meant to “play the game the right way.”</p>
<p>Fern&aacute;ndez defied those codes during his rookie year. The then 21-year-old hit his first major-league home run on Sept. 11, 2013, though “hit his first major-league home run” doesn’t do this shot justice. Fern&aacute;ndez crushed the ball, and he was justifiably thrilled, dropping his bat and watching his shot arc over the left-field fence before commencing a slow trot around the bases.</p>
<p>When Fern&aacute;ndez reached home plate, Atlanta Braves catcher Brian McCann started lecturing him, whereupon the benches cleared, and both teams pretended to want to fight each other. “I just told him you can’t do that,” <a href="http://m.mlb.com/news/article/60308506/">McCann said later</a>. “You can get someone hurt. It was just something that didn’t need to happen.” Braves third baseman Chris Johnson added, “The kid is a good pitcher. He’s got some other stuff going on, too, that upsets people sometimes. There were some guys in the dugout who weren’t too happy with the smiling after getting people out and all of that kind of stuff.”</p>
<p>Fern&aacute;ndez did not try to defend his actions. “I feel I don’t deserve to be here, because this isn’t high school no more,” he said. “This is a professional game, and we should be professional players. I think that never should happen. I’m embarrassed, and hopefully that will never happen again.”</p>
<p>Veterans lecturing rookies on how to behave is as much a part of baseball’s folkways as players scratching their crotches. These lectures are typically focused on ensuring the game is as much of a joyless slog as possible, and that lesson is enforced via threats of retaliatory violence. If you stop and stare because you’re happy about hitting the ball very far, then someone will throw a 95 mile per hour fastball at your head. If you smile at people after striking them out, then … someone will throw a 95 mile per hour fastball at your head. (Baseball players’ revenge plots are not very creative.)</p>
<p>Last October, the Toronto Blue Jays’ Jos&eacute; Bautista threatened to rip the game apart by launching his bat into orbit—a spontaneous reaction after hitting one of the most dramatic home runs in playoff history.</p>
<p>Bautista’s spectacular bat flip, Hall of Fame pitcher Goose Gossage later explained, represented everything wrong with the sport he’d once loved. “Bautista is a fucking disgrace to the game,” <a href="http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/14943065/goose-gossage-rips-jose-bautista-toronto-blue-jays-nerds-ruining-baseball">Gossage said in an interview with ESPN</a>. “He’s embarrassing to all the Latin players, whoever played before him.” Gossage made the subtext of the sport’s on-field policing explicit: White players born in the United States don’t think their Latino counterparts conform to the sport’s behavioral norms.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/magazine/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-baseball.html?_r=0">Jay Caspian Kang noted</a> in a <em>New York Times Magazine</em> story headlined “The Unbearable Whiteness of Baseball,” <a href="http://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/baseball-demographics-1947-2012">baseball’s demographics have shifted multiple times</a> since Jackie Robinson broke the game’s color line in 1947. That season, 98.3 percent of players were white, 0.9 percent were black Americans, and 0.7 percent were Latino. By 1975, 71.3 percent of major leaguers were white, 18.5 percent were black Americans, and 10.2 percent were Latino. At the start of the 2015 season, white players represented 58.8 percent of all major leaguers and 8.3 percent were black, while the sport’s Latino minority had <a href="http://nebula.wsimg.com/35d775f4b01264c377a96da7f616a3b8?AccessKeyId=DAC3A56D8FB782449D2A&amp;disposition=0&amp;alloworigin=1%20%20">grown to 29.3 percent of all major-league players</a>.</p>
<p>Back in November, the bat-flipping Bautista argued in <a href="http://www.theplayerstribune.com/jose-bautista-bat-flip/">a piece that appeared under his byline in the <em>Players’ Tribune</em></a> that Latin players can make baseball great again if the sport’s powers that be allow them to be themselves. “Baseball is a metaphor for America,” the <em>Players’ Tribune</em> article said. “It’s a giant melting pot made up of people from all over the world and all walks of life. How can you expect everybody to be exactly the same? Act exactly the same? More importantly, why would you <em>want </em>them to?”</p>
<p>I disagree with the Blue Jays slugger. It would be perfectly fine if every baseball player acted the same way on the field, so long as they all chose to act like Jos&eacute; Bautista and Jos&eacute; Fern&aacute;ndez.</p>
<p>In 2013, a month before the Braves got mad at him for hitting a home run, Fern&aacute;ndez snared a liner hit by the Rockies’ Troy Tulowizki. The subsequent byplay between the two All-Stars was joyful and human, and a reminder that intense competition doesn’t have to be unsmiling competition.</p>
<p>The next spring, the Rockies’ Carlos Gonz&aacute;lez hit a massive home run off Fern&aacute;ndez and loitered around the plate to admire his achievement. Fern&aacute;ndez didn’t pout or act aggrieved. He grinned, broadly.</p>
<p>Gonz&aacute;lez “was just acting like a really good baseball player who was excited about crushing a massive home run against another really good baseball player, and Fern&aacute;ndez understood that,” <a href="http://deadspin.com/a-lesson-from-carlos-gonzalez-and-jose-fernandez-baseb-1556059658"><em>Deadspin</em>’s Tom Ley wrote the next day</a>. “Together they helped make a baseball game something that baseball games increasingly struggle to be: fun.”</p>
<p>In the end, Fern&aacute;ndez failed to live up to the terms of his 2013 apology—his admonition to himself that “this isn’t high school no more”—and thank goodness for that. Goose Gossage, who was born in 1951, is not the face of the modern game. Neither is crusty 32-year-old catcher Brian McCann. Fern&aacute;ndez, smiling after he gave up a home run—that is the look everyone in baseball should aspire to emulate.</p>
<p>The sport’s young stars seem to understand that. <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14935765/washington-nationals-bryce-harper-wants-change-baseball-forever">In an <em>ESPN the Magazine</em> profile earlier this year,</a> reigning MVP Bryce Harper said that Fern&aacute;ndez represented a new image for a sport that truly needed one:</p>
<blockquote>
[Baseball is] a tired sport, because you can’t express yourself. You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair. …
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Jos&eacute; Fern&aacute;ndez is a great example. Jos&eacute; Fern&aacute;ndez will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist. And if you hit a homer and pimp it? He doesn't care. Because you got him. That’s part of the game. It’s not the old feeling—hoorah ... if you pimp a homer, I’m going to hit you right in the teeth. …
</blockquote>
<p>Fern&aacute;ndez could himself be susceptible to upholding baseball’s old codes. Just this month, <a href="http://www.talkingchop.com/2016/9/16/12949060/jose-ramirez-suspension-atlanta-braves-jose-fernandez-miami-marlins">he plunked Nick Markakis with a fastball</a> a couple of innings after the Braves outfielder hit a two-run homer. Later in the game, Atlanta’s Jos&eacute; Ramirez threw a pitch over Fern&aacute;ndez’s head, leading both benches to clear.</p>
<p>But far more often than not, Fern&aacute;ndez played with a kind of generosity of spirit that’s rare at any level of any sport. To understand what Fern&aacute;ndez represented, <a href="http://m.mlb.com/video/topic/6479266/v637177383/mialad-maeda-baffles-fernandez-with-a-pitch">watch this sequence in which he swings and misses at a breaking pitch</a> from the Dodgers’ Kenta Maeda.</p>
<p>“When Fern&aacute;ndez was a little kid … all he would do was hit rocks with a stick,” Dodgers announcer Vin Scully says, recounting the pitcher’s childhood in Cuba as the slow-motion replay appeared on screen. “He’d take a paper sack from his home and he’d go searching for rocks that had to be a good size like a baseball, and he’d spend his day hitting them with sticks.” Meanwhile, down on the field, Fern&aacute;ndez revels in Maeda’s skill. He’s delighted even when he’s been made to look a fool—delighted to be playing baseball.</p>Sun, 25 Sep 2016 18:28:18 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/marlins_pitcher_jose_fernandez_was_the_future_of_baseball.htmlJosh Levin2016-09-25T18:28:18ZThe Marlins’ exuberant, Cuban-born pitcher changed what it means to play the game the right way.SportsThe Joyful, Exuberant Jos&eacute; Fern&aacute;ndez Changed What It Means to Play Baseball the Right Way100160925001sportsbaseballJosh LevinSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/marlins_pitcher_jose_fernandez_was_the_future_of_baseball.htmlfalsefalsefalseJoyful, exuberant José Fernández changed what it means to play baseball the right way:The Marlins starting pitcher, who died at age 24, was the future of baseball.Rob Foldy/Getty ImagesJos&eacute; Fern&aacute;ndez of the Miami Marlins walks off the field during the third inning of the game against the Kansas City Royals at Marlins Park on Aug. 24, 2016 in Miami, Florida.Why Do the Green Bay Packers’ Opponents&nbsp;Stay at a Radisson in Appleton?http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/why_the_green_bay_packers_opponents_stay_at_a_radisson_in_appleton_wisconsin.html
<p>On the morning of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_NFL_Championship_Game">1965 NFL Championship Game</a>, fans, players, and everyone else north of Madison, Wisconsin, woke up to what they thought was a light winter snowfall. By noon, three inches blanketed the tarpaulin over Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, making the warning of “severe weather conditions” sound criminally euphemistic. Some fans driving up from Milwaukee slid off the road at a bridge near the unfortunately named town of Butte des Morts (“Mound of the Dead,” in French). Tens of thousands of feet above Green Bay, a charter plane carrying Wisconsin Gov. Warren P. Knowles was forced to return to Madison, where he would eventually watch the game on television.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as David Maraniss writes in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0684870185/?tag=slatmaga-20"><em>When Pride Still Mattered</em></a>, his biography of Vince Lombardi, “the Browns were staying in a hotel in Appleton and it took their bus nearly two hours to reach the stadium from 30 miles away.” In a sport that requires extraordinary concentration, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the delays getting to the stadium and the lack of warm-up time may have hindered the Browns that day. The Packers won the game handily, 23-12, in what would be the first of three consecutive championships. Cleveland’s star running back Jim Brown, who was held to a mere 50 rushing yards, retired following the loss at the age of 29. Though the last game he played was at Lambeau in Green Bay, the last hotel he stayed in as an NFL player was in Appleton.</p>
<p>Appleton is a sleepy town roughly three-quarters the size of Green Bay and nearly 30 miles southwest of Lambeau Field on I-41. In May, the site <em>24/7 Wall St.</em> <a href="http://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/2016/05/17/drunkest-city-us-s-appleton-report-says/84491100/">named it the “drunkest city in America.”</a> More than two dozen bars line each side of College Avenue in downtown Appleton. Interrupting the rows of bars is a skybridge that belongs to the <a href="https://www.radisson.com/appleton-hotel-wi-54911/wiapprad">Radisson Paper Valley</a>, a hotel with 388 rooms and 38,000 square feet of event space. In recent months, the Paper Valley, as it’s known in town, has hosted an awards ceremony for a marathon, a concert series, and a Women’s Fund luncheon. But it’s best-known as the preferred host of NFL teams when they come to Wisconsin to play the Packers. This year, and nearly every year since the early 1990s, all eight of the Packers’ regular-season opponents will stay there, starting with the Detroit Lions this weekend.</p>
<p><a></a>This is the most peculiar hotel situation in the NFL. While there are numerous fine hotels within spitting distance of Lambeau, teams choose to stay a ways away at what is not exactly a luxury establishment. “A 30-minute drive from the hotel to the stadium is pretty commonplace in other NFL cities,” Aaron Popkey, the Packers’ director of public affairs and former travel manager, told me, and, in places like Dallas or San Francisco teams frequently stay more than 30 minutes away from the stadium.<a>*</a> But according to Rich Ryman, the Packers business reporter for the <em>Green Bay Press-Gazette</em>, it’s the only situation where a visiting NFL team stays in a different city—not just a suburb or adjacent metropolitan area—from the home team.</p>
<p>Several weeks ago, I dropped in on the hotel’s general manager. Jay Schumerth looks like a stockier Chuck Pagano, goatee included. He’s worked at the hotel since 1986, well before teams started staying there. Back then, he recalls, the hotel didn’t amount to much. Built in 1982, the Paper Valley had just 200 rooms, a ballroom, and a conference room. It was more than adequate for Appleton, but nowhere near the specifications required by a major professional sports franchise. The Minnesota Vikings became the first team to stay there, he recalls, in the late 1980s. As its footballing clientele grew, so too did the hotel. By 1993, when the building inaugurated its so-called west wing—a 96-room section of rooms and meeting space, secluded from the rest of the hotel’s occupants—road teams stayed in the Paper Valley almost exclusively.</p>
<p>The Paper Valley is not luxurious, unique, or sophisticated. It does have one standout feature: <a href="http://www.vincelombardisteakhouse.com/">Vince Lombardi’s Steakhouse</a>, which looks like a more upscale version of Applebee’s, Packers paraphernalia borrowed from the Lombardi estate covering the walls like papier-m&acirc;che. But in the rest of the hotel, the d&eacute;cor is low-key. The cream-colored walls sometimes have distressed patches, though it’s difficult to tell which are intentional and which are not. Rustic lighting fixtures sprout from the walls every dozen or so steps, their design a more deliberate attempt to tap into weathered chic. A cinnamon scent courses through the building; follow your nose, and it seems to emanate from one of the restrooms.</p>
<p>“We’re not as sexy as those hotels,” Schumerth told me, referring to the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, and other high-end resting places where teams stay. To get the Vikings and Lions and Bears to keep coming back, he says, he needs to provide the best customer service in the NFL. “One of the things I preach to my staff is, we don’t take anything for granted,” Schumerth says. “Most of the guys will say, ‘This is our easiest trip of the year. We don’t have to worry about anything, we just show up. You guys do things before we even have to ask. You guys ask questions that nobody else asks.’ ”</p>
<p>I asked him to give an example. Imagine if a player has a stalker, he volunteered—we’d ask about that beforehand and have the appropriate security measures in place. It was a subject, I gathered, about which he had more than passing knowledge. “Hey, so-and-so always shows up on these road trips. It drives us crazy. … This guy or girl always shows up and asks for him in every city we go to,” he said, briefly impersonating one of the travel managers he works with on a regular basis. “If you’ve never hosted a team, you wouldn’t think of those things.”</p>
<p>In 2009, <a href="http://www.vincelombardisteakhouse.com/downloads/RPVH_NFL_MVP_Award_Release.pdf">the Paper Valley won the NFL Travel Managers’ MVP</a>—“Most Valuable Property”—Award. Schumerth was equal parts proud and confounded by the recognition. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know the award existed,” he told me, shrugging his shoulders. Back in his office, he shuffled toward one of the bookshelves, returning with a block of glass partially cut in the shape of a prism. A large NFL logo graced one plane, and the award inscription was below it, citing the Paper Valley for “outstanding service to the NFL.”</p>
<p>Despite its award-winning status, rumors swirled three years ago that the Paper Valley might lose its hegemony on hosting visiting teams. A real estate developer had begun sketching plans to renovate the historic Hotel Northland in downtown Green Bay. “<a href="http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost.php?s=675499df11d950538fa9096472f57aec&amp;p=105543393&amp;postcount=9959">We think it’d be great to have the visiting teams stay downtown again</a>,” Greg Flisram, the city’s then economic development director said at the time. “We’d love to see it happen.”</p>
<p>Built in 1923, the <a href="http://thehotelnorthland.com/">Hotel Northland</a> quickly became a Green Bay icon. A product of the Roaring Twenties, the high-end hotel, plush with restaurants and bars, hosted weddings, charity events, and touring politicians. When the NFL Championship Game was held in Green Bay—in 1961, 1965, and 1967—the Northland became the league headquarters. Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner, delivered the State of the League press conferences from one of its ballrooms.</p>
<p>As late as the 1970s, the Northland still attracted the Wisconsin elite and, on weekends, hosted the teams that played the Packers. Visiting teams, a former hotel staffer named Victoria Parmentier recalled, checked in on Saturday afternoons. Bob Safford, the hotel owner, would do the rounds on Saturday evenings with the team owner, the team doctor, and, sometimes the head coach, opening player rooms with his master key to make sure everyone was tucked in by the 11 p.m. curfew.</p>
<p>The players checked out early Sunday morning and, at midday, the hotel cleaning staff quickly turned over around 50 rooms. Hours later, hundreds of fans would swoop into the hotel to check in for their one-night stays. Parmentier showed me Standard Diary notebooks spanning from 1971 to 1978, the year before the hotel closed. “Vikings Meetings. Set each one theater style. 30 people. Movie screen and projection tables, extension cords and blackboard w/ chalk” read one reservation. “New York Giants. 8 a.m. Mass. Use English and Italian [rooms] for meetings after pregame meal” read another. As the years passed, the room reservations became more laconic. “Pompeiian: Bears.” “Colonial: Tampa.”</p>
<p>Green Bay’s downtown, like that of many American cities, began a sad, slow decline in the late 1970s. The Hotel Northland became the Port Plaza Inn and, by 1980, had reopened as a low-income housing complex, which it would remain until 2013. Throughout the 1980s, road teams scrambled to find accommodations in Green Bay, staying at hotels across the city: Howard Johnson, Ramada, Downtowner (today, a Best Western), Holiday Inn. Then, at the end of the decade, the Vikings made the move to the Paper Valley.</p>
<p>Fast-forward three decades, and today’s NFL franchises still set curfew for 11 p.m. and still sometimes hold mass in hotel conference rooms. But gone are the days when a team would need just 50 rooms, one meeting room, and a small ballroom. Today, Schumerth explains, teams require six to seven meeting rooms, 10,000 square feet of open space, and between 160-180 rooms—and this despite the fact that most players, save stars like Aaron Rodgers, still sleep two to a room.</p>
<p>NFL beat reporters and hotel-industry people suggested to me that the Paper Valley is the only hotel in the area with the requisite room count and meeting space to host a modern professional football team. But that’s not entirely true. The Tundra Lodge, a mile away from Lambeau, could fit a team snugly in its 162 rooms and 18,000 square feet of event space. (Occupying the entire hotel might also make security easier to manage.) Another Radisson, less than five miles from Lambeau Field, more than meets the requirements with its 353 rooms and 30,000 square feet of meeting space. (The Packers regularly stay at this hotel the night before a game.) But the most natural pairing for teams might be the Hyatt Regency, which is less than four miles from Lambeau. Its layout—241 rooms, one 25,000 square foot ballroom, two smaller ballrooms, and seven large meeting rooms—and upscale character would blend in nicely with the other hotels on any team’s travel schedule. Yet since the mid-1990s, upwards of 95 percent of teams, ESPN Packers beat reporter Rob Demovsky told me, stay in the Paper Valley.</p>
<p>Why isn’t Green Bay the place to be for visiting NFL teams? The NFL is a different league than it was in the 1980s. As pro football grew in popularity, the financial gap between fans and players grew, and front offices became more protective of their most valuable assets. Security details got bigger and teams wanted to be a bit more secluded. The Paper Valley offered the perfect give and take: Teams would sacrifice the perks (and price) of boutique downtown hotels for assurances of security and privacy. As one reporter summarized it for me, “the players are not fans of the hotel, but the teams are.” In other cities, teams sometimes find seclusion in the suburbs or near the airport—though they mostly choose to stay as close to the stadium as possible. Generally, they don’t skimp on expensive hotels. But when they fly to northern Wisconsin, they do.</p>
<p>The Green Bay hotels don’t want to host road teams either—it’s much more profitable to host visiting fans. According to a <a href="http://www.packers.com/assets/docs/2010economic_impact_report.pdf">2010 economic impact report on the potential expansion of Lambeau Field</a>, each Packers home game generates $12 million in revenue for the city. A staggering 87 percent of fans, the report noted, come from out of town to see the game, many of them traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles. On game-day weekends, the city inflates by many tens of thousands of people. Hotels take advantage of the captive audience, hiking their prices to two or three times their regular rates and requiring a two-night minimum stays. In addition to paying upwards of $300 for decent tickets, according to <a href="https://seatgeek.com/lions-at-packers-tickets/9-25-2016-green-bay-wisconsin-lambeau-field/nfl/3232993">the latest prices on SeatGeek for this weekend’s game</a> against the Lions, fans will also spend at least $600 on a hotel room.</p>
<p>Visiting teams, on the other hand, still want the sweetener of bulk rates. And this despite the astronomical budgets of today’s NFL franchises. When the Packers stay at the JW Marriott in Chicago, one reporter told me, the team pays a discounted rate of $150 per night for rooms that would normally go for $350 or more. All teams demand those kinds of rates wherever they go, including at the Paper Valley. Schumerth is happy to offer those rates to opposing teams because, being in Appleton, he wouldn’t be able to fill the Paper Valley during an NFL weekend without the visiting team.<strong></strong></p>
<p>The new season, for Schumerth and his staff, begins in February. Once the NFL year is over, he reserves just less than half of the hotel for all 17 weekends of the following season, sometimes sacrificing the ability to host conferences, weddings, and other events. By the end of that month, he and his staff have tabulated all of the costs—the only exception being the room rate—for each of the eight visiting teams and spoken to all of their travel managers. Their only bit of help: Schumerth and other hotel managers are allowed to peek at the schedule a few hours before it’s released to the public and sworn to secrecy about its contents.</p>
<p>Given that it’s more lucrative, for both the city of Green Bay and its hotels, to keep the visiting teams out of town, the early rhetoric surrounding the renovation of the Hotel Northland seems misplaced. Most people I spoke to found it difficult to imagine visiting teams returning to the Packers’ home town. The Paper Valley “has created a nice operation for visiting teams,” Popkey, the former Packers travel manager, told me. The idea that teams will return to town taps into the nostalgia still felt by those who grew up with the football team a half-century ago. “It was fun for people in the ‘50s and ‘60s to go down to the Northland and drink beer on a Saturday night and run into players and be able to talk to them and listen to their stories. It was open access. <a></a>There was still this beer-and-pretzels atmosphere surrounding the NFL. But that just wouldn’t happen today,” Cliff Christl, the Packers’ team historian, told me. “Now they’re pretty much sequestered in their hotels.”</p>
<p><em><strong>*Correction, Sept. 23, 2016:</strong> This story originally and incorrectly stated that Aaron Popkey is the Packers’ travel manager. He is the team’s director of public affairs and former travel manager. (<a>Return.</a>)</em></p>Fri, 23 Sep 2016 18:03:40 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/why_the_green_bay_packers_opponents_stay_at_a_radisson_in_appleton_wisconsin.htmlBécquer Seguín2016-09-23T18:03:40ZA <strong><em>Slate</em></strong> investigation.SportsAn NFL Hotel Mystery:&nbsp;Why Do the Packers’ Opponents&nbsp;Stay at a Radisson in Appleton, Wisconsin?100160923018sportsnflfootballa slate investigationBécquer SeguínSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/why_the_green_bay_packers_opponents_stay_at_a_radisson_in_appleton_wisconsin.htmlfalsefalsefalseAn NFL hotel mystery: Why do Packers opponents Stay at a Radisson in Appleton?It's the most peculiar hotel situation in the NFL.Radisson Paper ValleyThe Radisson Paper Valley won the NFL Travel Managers’ MVP—“Most Valuable Property”—Award in 2009.Idiots on the Field Are the Forbidden Fruit of Sports TVhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/why_don_t_tv_networks_show_idiots_on_the_field.html
<p>“Hey, somebody’s run out on the field,” Westwood One’s <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/2016/9/13/12899800/kevin-harlan-fan-on-the-field-call-video-radio-49ers">Kevin Harlan told a national radio audience</a> tuning in for the Rams-49ers season opener on Sept. 12. “Some goofball in a hat and a red shirt. Now he takes off the shirt,” Harlan continued, his voice rising. “He’s running down the middle by the 50! He’s at the 30! He’s bare-chested, banging his chest!” The call went on from there—“the guy is drunk, but there he goes!”—with Harlan’s voice ebbing and flowing as the fan, later identified as <a href="http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2016/09/13/brentwood-teen-who-ran-on-field-at-49ers-game-you-only-live-once/">a 16-year-old who was not in fact drunk</a>, dodged and weaved across the turf at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.</p>
<p>Though Harlan’s words painted a vivid picture of teenage idiocy, fans watching <em>Monday Night Football</em> on ESPN saw and heard nothing of the sort. The video above, made by a YouTube user named Nick Ramos, was constructed by syncing Harlan’s radio call with still photos and cellphone footage. So why didn’t ESPN show the “<a href="http://deadspin.com/tag/idiot-on-the-field">idiot on the field</a>”?</p>
<p>“We’re not looking to glorify someone running onto the field,” says Tim Corrigan, who produced the West Coast <em>Monday Night Football</em> opener for ESPN. “We want to make sure we show what the fans care about, and that’s the game.”</p>
<p>On account of what a snooze the 49ers-Rams contest was, and given that Harlan’s call immediately went viral, it’s hard to agree with Corrigan’s assessment that fans didn’t want to see the goofball in the red shirt. For viewers at home, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_invasion">pitch invader</a> is forbidden fruit—an object of interest precisely because broadcasters don’t want us to see it.</p>
<p>The general refusal to televise on-field interruptions isn’t the result of some dictum from sports leagues or a written rule enforced by network executives. It’s more of an “unwritten policy everywhere,” says Fred Gaudelli, the executive producer of NBC’s <em>Sunday Night Football</em>. When it comes to field crashers, Gaudelli says, “Why give them what they’re looking for when all they’re doing is creating an unwanted interruption?”&nbsp;Neal Pilson, the former president of CBS Sports, concurs with his NBC counterpart: “The decisions are made individually by the TV carriers but all seem to have come to the same conclusion: Don’t show it.”</p>
<p>That’s not the case everywhere in the world. A few minutes after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime-show_controversy">Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s right breast</a> during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show, a British streaker named Matt Roberts <a href="http://nesn.com/2014/01/former-patriot-matt-chatham-levels-streaker-during-super-bowl-xxxviii-video/">snuck onto the field in a referee’s uniform</a> and dropped trou. The announcers calling the game on Danish television were delighted by Roberts’ naked form as well as Patriots linebacker <a href="http://nesn.com/2014/01/former-patriot-matt-chatham-levels-streaker-during-super-bowl-xxxviii-video/">Matt Chatham’s impressive tackle</a>.</p>
<p>On American TV, CBS’s Greg Gumbel drolly noted that “the halftime entertainment apparently never stops.” Phil Simms added, “It’s a bad body and there’s too much of it being shown.” But CBS didn’t show any of that bad body, instead focusing on Tedy Bruschi’s game face.</p>
<p>For broadcasters, the biggest problem with pitch invaders is their unpredictability. A producer like Corrigan or Gaudelli doesn’t know if the proverbial idiot on the field is going to run around harmlessly, strip naked, or attack a player. During Euro 2016, a fan ran on to the pitch to take a selfie with Cristiano Ronaldo in what turned out to be a harmless t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te.</p>
<p>The same thing happened to a not-at-all-pleased Roger Federer at the 2015 French Open.</p>
<p>Again, the fan did no harm, but it was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/sports/tennis/roger-federer-is-not-amused-with-fans-selfie.html?_r=0">an unwelcome reminder</a> of the horrific incident in which Monica Seles was attacked on the court by a deranged man in 1993.</p>
<p>A few months after the Federer court-storming, a soccer player for England’s Derby County <a href="http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/10058814/johnson-confronted-by-pitch-invader">got shoved by a fan who’d crashed the pitch</a>. And just last week, a security guard at San Francisco’s AT&amp;T Park <a href="http://deadspin.com/security-guard-breaks-leg-trying-to-catch-idiot-on-the-1786752085">broke his leg in two places</a> tackling a pitch invader during a baseball game between the Giants and St. Louis Cardinals. Warning: The video below is pretty gross.</p>
<p>Thanks to cellphones and social media, mainstream broadcasters don’t need to show anything for a gatecrasher to go viral. The fan in a “Harambe 69” jersey who charged out of the stands and on to the grass at Fenway Park got his moment of glory on Instagram.</p>
<p>On American television, there is at least one exception to the no-pitch-invaders rule. A few hours before the hat-wearing goofball took the field in Santa Clara, protesters stormed the stage during Ryan Lochte’s performance on the season premiere of <em>Dancing With the Stars</em>.</p>
<p>ABC chose not to air that stunt live, opting to break to commercial. <em>DWTS</em> did feature it, though, in the opening to the next week’s show.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3uYyNtEfRM">The Lochte-storming was a legitimate news event</a>, one ABC had to cover. It also <a href="http://deadline.com/2016/09/ryan-lochte-crashers-dancing-with-the-stars-ratings-america-ninja-warriors-so-you-think-you-can-dance-monday-night-football-1201818634/">didn’t hurt the ratings</a> to show the star of the new season in (mild) peril. But the choice made by ABC’s entertainment division won’t affect how sports producers and broadcasters treat pitch invaders going forward. <a href="http://www.si.com/tech-media/2016/09/18/kevin-harlan-fan-call-colin-kaepernick-kneeling-national-anthem">In an interview with <em>Sports Illustrated</em>’s Richard Deitsch</a>, Harlan said he never would’ve made his now-famous call if he’d been calling the game on television, because “the cameras would not have been on the guy.” Despite being inundated with congratulatory texts and interview requests, Harlan told Deitsch he’s not about to test the football media gods again: “I feel like it’s been done and the worst thing would be to do it again.”</p>Thu, 22 Sep 2016 17:33:42 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/why_don_t_tv_networks_show_idiots_on_the_field.htmlMatt Osgood2016-09-22T17:33:42ZWhy don’t networks show them?SportsIdiots on the Field Are the Forbidden Fruit of Sports TV. Why Don’t Networks Show Them?100160922018nflfootballMatt OsgoodSports Nuthttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/why_don_t_tv_networks_show_idiots_on_the_field.htmlfalsefalsefalseIdiots on the field are the forbidden fruit of sports TV. Why don’t networks show them?It’s an “unwritten policy everywhere.”1519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t513627147000151326011710011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t513627147000151326011710011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t513627147000151326011710011519028539001AQ~~,AAAAAASoY90~,_gW1ZHvKG_2pKN0AJTySft1Irx-gT62t51362714700015132601171001Brandon Warner/YouTube49ers fan William Navarrete feels on-field glory during the game between San Francisco and the Los Angeles Rams at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, Sept. 12, 2016.So You Dropped the Ball Before You Scored a Touchdownhttp://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/09/dropping_the_ball_before_the_end_zone_a_comprehensive_guide.html
<p>On Saturday night, a pair of college football players celebrated touchdowns prematurely, dropping the pigskin just before they crossed the goal line. The fling-the-ball-away-before-reaching-the-end-zone move has become a gridiron epidemic in recent years, or perhaps high-definition television and slow-motion replay have at last allowed us to see the balls that have been dropping around us all this time.</p>
<p>Below, I’ve collected every play I could find in which a guy released the ball in a celebratory pre-end-zone manner. Some methodological notes: I did not include, for instance, Florida State running back <a href="mailto:http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2016/9/5/12806578/florida-state-ole-miss-dalvin-cook-fumble">Dalvin Cook’s recent fumble against Ole Miss</a>, which was embarrassing and happened near the end zone but did not happen as a result of premature celebration. I also did not include the time when <a href="mailto:https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv=rNOvBSTqLoc">Plaxico Burress spiked a live ball</a> and other <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2006-11-28/sports/0611280079_1_tomlinson-diego-chargers-jackson">similar plays</a>; while awesome, Burress’ move was not end-zone adjacent and thus does not count for these purposes.</p>
<p>As of this moment, I’ve collected 34 of these plays and have video/GIF evidence of 30 of them. In 33 of the plays, a player drops the ball on his way in to the opponent’s end zone. What’s the outlier? Read on to find out.</p>
<p>If I missed a play, or if you can track down one of the videos I can’t find, <a href="mailto:josh@josh-levin.com">send me an email</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Update, Sept. 20, 2016: </strong><em>I’ve added four more examples sent in by readers: the St. Louis Cardinals’ Pat Tilley in 1985, the San Francisco 49ers’ Jerry Rice in 1989, Nebraska’s Calvin Jones in 1992, and the Green Bay Packers’ Sterling Sharpe in 1992. I’ve also updated the numbers throughout to reflect the new dropped touchdown total.</em></p>
<p><strong>Update, Sept. 26, 2016: </strong><em>Added one more example: Alabama’s Mark Barron in 2009.</em></p>
<p><strong>Update, Oct. 29, 2016: </strong><em>Added Oregon's Pharaoh Brown.</em></p>
<p><strong>Update, Nov. 27, 2016: </strong><em>Added Missouri's Ish Witter</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Update, Dec. 2, 2017: </strong><em>Added Florida Atlantic's John Franklin III</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Dec. 2, 2017<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Florida Atlantic quarterback John Franklin III<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown.&nbsp;After official review, the <a href="https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/auburn-football/watch-former-auburn-qb-john-franklin-iii-makes-dumb-mistake-cusa-title-game/">referees determined Franklin dropped the ball</a> before reaching the end zone and North Texas recovered for a touchback. </p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Florida Atlantic beat North Texas 41-17.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Nov. 25, 2016<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Missouri running back Ish Witter<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown. Though Witter dropped the ball before he crossed the goal line, <a href="https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/mizzou-football/photo-hero-mizzou-player-bails-dumb-teammate/">his teammate&nbsp;J’Mon Moore recovered it</a> in the end zone.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Missouri beat Arkansas 28-24.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Oct. 29, 2016<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Oregon tight end Pharaoh Brown<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown.&nbsp;The play was not reviewed by officials despite the fact Brown <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2672732-oregon-te-pharaoh-brown-appears-to-let-go-of-ball-before-crossing-goal-line">appeared to drop the ball on the 1-yard line</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Oregon beat Arizona State 54-35.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 17, 2016<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Cal running back Vic Enwere<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown. After an official review, the referee said incorrectly that there was no immediate recovery by the defense; in reality, a Texas player picked the ball up within a couple of seconds. <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/cals-controversial-upset-of-texas-includes-goal-line-throw-away-strange-officiating/">Cal was awarded the ball on the 1-yard line</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome:</strong> Cal beat Texas 50-43.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 17, 2016<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Oklahoma kick returner Joe Mixon<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown. The play was not reviewed by officials despite the fact Mixon clearly dropped the ball on the 1-yard line. Fox broadcasters were also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2016/09/17/oklahomas-joe-mixon-got-away-with-dropping-the-football-before-scoring/">very slow to notice that Mixon let the ball go</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Mixon’s Sooners lost to Ohio State 45-24.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 17, 2016<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> South Carolina State kick returner Ahmaad Harris<br /> <strong>Play: </strong>The outlier! This one doesn’t quite fit, but it’s too amazing not to include. Harris caught a kickoff in the end zone, <a href="http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/09/clemson-south-carolina-state-returner-oops-live-ball-touchdown-video">flipped the ball to the ref without taking a knee</a>, and watched as Clemson recovered the ball for a touchdown. Whoops.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome:</strong> South Carolina State lost to Clemson 59-0.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 10, 2016<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Clemson punt returner Ray-Ray McCloud<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown. After official review, the <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/news/clemsons-ray-ray-mccloud-drops-the-ball-on-the-way-to-the-end-zone-video-184706940.html">referees determined McCloud dropped the ball</a> before reaching the end zone and Troy recovered for a touchback. Given his experience, McCloud told reporters on September 17 that he <a href="http://theclemsoninsider.com/2016/09/18/mccloud-paying-it-forward/">had the life experience to console Ahmaad Harris</a>. (See above.)</p>
<p><strong>Outcome:</strong> Clemson beat Troy 30-24.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Oct. 24, 2015<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> William &amp; Mary running back Kendell Anderson<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> An all-time great, because Anderson dropped the ball in a celebratory manner at <em>the 4-yard line</em>. The ball went through the end zone for a touchback.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome:</strong> It didn’t matter, because William &amp; Mary beat Hampton 40-7.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Jan. 12, 2015<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Oregon wide receiver/running back Byron Marshall<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown. After official review, referees determined <a href="http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2015/01/watch_as_byron_marshall_almost.html">Marshall held on to the ball just long enough for this to count as a touchdown</a>. Marshall made history here, as this was the first-ever celebratory almost-not-quite-a-touchdown in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome:</strong> Marshall’s Ducks lost to Ohio State 42-20.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Nov. 8, 2014<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Utah wide receiver Kaelin Clay<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> The most amazing dropped ball boner of all time. Clay caught a long pass against Oregon for what looked like a touchdown. The ESPN announcers called it a touchdown and the cameras focused on the celebratory Utah crowd. Meanwhile, Oregon’s Joe Walker was running up the sideline. Clay, it turned out, had dropped the ball, Walker picked it up, and the Oregon player ran it back for a touchdown of his own. Amazingly, the official on the goal line <a href="http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/11845079/oregon-ducks-return-fumble-100-yards-utah-utes">saw it all the way and called the play correctly</a>. The Oregon touchdown was upheld on review.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Clay’s Utah Utes lost to Oregon 51-27.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Oct. 4, 2014<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Mississippi State wide receiver Fred Brown<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown. Not reviewed by officials, though <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/10/4/6908027/did-mississippi-states-fred-brown-drop-the-ball-before-scoring-a-td">Brown dropped the ball before crossing the goal line</a>. Please enjoy the video evidence below via the lowest-quality clip in the history of YouTube.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Mississippi State beat Texas A&amp;M 48-31.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Aug. 30, 2014<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Oregon wide receiver/running back Byron Marshall<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown. After official review, <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/index.ssf/2014/08/about_last_night_marshalls_goa.html">referees determined Marshall dropped the ball too soon</a> and gave possession to South Dakota because the ball went out of bounds in the end zone. The astute reader will note that Marshall somehow did this twice in the same season. (See the national championship game above.)</p>
<p><strong>Outcome:</strong> Oregon beat South Dakota 62-13.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Jan. 1, 2014<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Iowa safety John Lowdermilk<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled an interception for a touchdown. After official review, referees determined <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_20eabd58-0a17-574a-b543-d83a8f5e3829.html">Lowdermilk tossed the ball away before crossing the goal line</a>. Since the ball just sat there in the end zone and nobody picked it up, the refs awarded the ball to Iowa at the spot where Lowdermilk released it. Iowa would score a touchdown three plays later.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Iowa lost to LSU in the Outback Bowl 21-14.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Nov. 30, 2013<br /> <strong>Player: </strong>USC running back Javorius Allen<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown. Not reviewed by officials, though <a href="http://larrybrownsports.com/college-football/notre-dame-touchdown-tj-jones-early-celebration/29487">Allen likely dropped the ball before crossing the goal line</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>USC lost to UCLA 35-14.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 12, 2013<br /> <strong>Player: </strong>Texas Tech running back DeAndre Washington<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown. After official review, <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/news/clemsons-ray-ray-mccloud-drops-the-ball-on-the-way-to-the-end-zone-video-184706940.html">referees determined Washington dropped the ball</a> before reaching the end zone. As there was no clear recovery by the defense, Texas Tech retained the ball and subsequently scored a touchdown.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Washington’s Red Raiders would go on to beat TCU 20-10.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 5, 2013<br /> <strong>Player: </strong>Denver Broncos linebacker Danny Trevathan<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Trevathan ran back an interception of the Ravens’ Joe Flacco for an almost-touchdown but dropped the ball at the 1-yard line. <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000239045/article/broncos-lb-danny-trevathan-has-blooper-to-remember">The ball went out of the end zone for a touchback</a>. Miraculously, the referees got this call right in real time. Way to go, refs!</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Trevathan’s Broncos won 49-27.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Dec. 1, 2012<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Kansas State cornerback Nigel Malone<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled an interception for a touchdown. After official review, <a href="http://scores.espn.com/ncf/recap?gameId=323362306">referees determined Malone dropped the ball</a> before reaching the end zone. As there was no clear recovery, Kansas State was awarded the ball and subsequently scored a touchdown.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome:</strong> Kansas State beat Texas 42-24.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Nov. 11, 2012<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Denver Broncos punt returner Trindon Holliday<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown. Not reviewed by officials, though <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/trindon-holliday-drops-ball-crosses-goal-line-officials-222850664--nfl.html">Holliday likely dropped the ball before crossing the goal line</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Denver beat Carolina 36-14.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Dec. 3, 2011<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> LSU punt returner Tyrann Mathieu<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown. Not reviewed by officials, though slow-motion replay showed <a href="http://www.sportsgrid.com/real-sports/ncaa-football/did-ty-mathieu-fail-to-score-on-this-punt-return-td/">Mathieu probably flipped the ball to the ref before crossing the goal line</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>LSU won the SEC Championship Game 42-10, with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfF8YjGYmak">the Honey Badger single-handedly destroying Georgia</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 24, 2011<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Oklahoma State wide receiver Justin Blackmon<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> This one is borderline. <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/ncaa-football/2011/9/24/2447098/justin-blackmon-fumble-video-oklahoma-state-vs-texas-am">Blackmon lost the ball as he cruised into the end zone</a>, fumbling it out of bounds for a touchback. Was he celebrating too soon? Maybe. But he didn’t drop the pigskin intentionally, which makes this more akin to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5MWOt8dus0">Dalvin Cook’s accidental fumble</a> than any other play on this list.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Oklahoma State still won, knocking off Texas A&amp;M 30-29.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 11, 2010<br /> <strong>Player: </strong>Toronto Argonauts defensive lineman Ronald Flemons<br /> <strong>Play: </strong>A Canadian! Again, this one is borderline, as Flemons didn’t dump the ball on purpose. <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/cfl/blog/cfl_experts/post/Comparing-Flemons-fumble-to-other-football-foll?urn=cfl-269011">The Argonauts defender lost the ball</a>, knew he lost the ball, and was unable to recover the ball. The B.C. Lions recovered in the end zone for a touchback.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>The Argonauts lost to the Lions 37-16.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 11, 2010<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Notre Dame wide receiver T.J. Jones<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a touchdown and stayed a touchdown. Not reviewed by officials, though <a href="http://larrybrownsports.com/college-football/notre-dame-touchdown-tj-jones-early-celebration/29487">Jones dropped the ball before crossing the goal line</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Outcome: </strong>Notre Dame lost to Michigan 28-24.</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Sept. 10, 2010<br /> <strong>Player:</strong> Marshall wide receiver Aaron Dobson<br /> <strong>Play:</strong> Originally ruled a t